


Nepenthe

by DaScribbla



Series: Nepenthe [1]
Category: Crimson Peak (2015)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Blood and Gore, Canon Universe, Drug Use, Femdom, Ghosts, Implied Mpreg, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Spousal Abuse, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Multi, Sex Repulsion/Sensitivity, Sibling Incest, Suicide Attempt, Weddings, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-30
Updated: 2016-08-04
Packaged: 2018-06-05 11:08:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 58,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6702283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaScribbla/pseuds/DaScribbla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It had been an open secret for quite some time that Carter Cushing’s only daughter would never marry.</p><p>The A/O fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Somebody had to write it. Also, I worldbuilt the crap out of this, so.

It had been an open secret for quite some time that Carter Cushing’s only daughter would never marry. Starting ever since the girl turned sixteen and hadn’t been “taken ill” once, as modern fashion would term it, tongues had wagged behind hands; the kinder gossips made excuses -- _“Some girls are late bloomers, you know how it goes”_ \-- while the less kind wondered what was wrong with her. Edith seemed happy and healthy enough, if a little more bookish than was preferable. But by her seventeenth birthday, it was too late to deny what had happened. The tell-tale scent clung to the Cushing girl the way some girls wore perfume and everyone she passed knew, on some level, that she was no good. She could tend to her father when he reached his dotage, but marriage was entirely out of the question.

There was, of course, always the McMichael boy, but everyone knew his harridan of a mother would never allow the match, despite the fact that Alan had made it clear such a match would not be unwelcome. And it was no secret that Cushing himself was making every attempt to convince his daughter of the wisdom in marrying Alan -- respectability, the guarantee of a steady societal position after he was gone, and at least grudging acceptance. There would be no children, but that was the price to pay. Some said that one could see the anxiety of it in Cushing’s face. With an Alpha daughter, there would be no grandson to pass on the business. The Cushing line would die with Edith. 

That would be years off. But no matter how much the Cushings tried to keep up appearances, everyone in Buffalo knew that in spite of Edith’s dowry, no one would come to court her. 

* * *

_It was a cruel irony,_ Edith thought to herself, not for the first time, as she lifted her skirts to avoid tripping on her way down the staircase, _that I was born a woman._ A male Alpha could own property, could be the head of his household, could, for God’s sake, make a child…  

A male Alpha would have gotten a publishing agreement. 

Too late, lost in her own angry ruminations -- _just because he could smell it across the desk!_ \-- she saw Mrs. McMichael and her daughter Eunice round the corner of the street and make directly for her. Perhaps she could avoid them if she pretended she was in a great rush? But they were already upon her.

“Well, our very own Jane Austen,” said Mrs. McMichael, teeth bared, her hat creating a great shadow over her face as she more or less accosted Edith there on the building steps. “I hope your appointment was successful?” she added, nodding to the manuscript under Edith’s arm. Edith forced a smile to her face.

“Unfortunately not,” she said. “But I hope for better luck in the future.”

“Of course,” said Mrs. McMichael. “Best of luck. But I’m afraid Eunice and I must be getting along,” she added in a tone that suggested she’d been waiting the entire conversation for just this moment. “We have a _very_ important visitor coming to call.” She was bursting with pride and it was too much fun for Edith not to egg her on.

“Who’s the visitor?”

“Thomas Sharpe. He’s a Baronet, all the way from England,” she said. If her smile grew wider, it would burst through her cheeks. “Between you and me, Edith --” She lowered her voice. “-- I think our Baronet has developed an attachment.” Her eyes flicked meaningfully to Eunice, who flushed red but couldn’t hide her look of pride. 

“How nice,” said Edith. Mrs. McMichael patted her arm.

“Don’t fret, Edith, darling.” She leaned in conspiratorially. “Married life isn’t for everyone, you know. You keep writing your novels.”

Edith wondered privately how proud Mrs. McMichael would feel if she were to explain courtship as _she_ viewed it -- a facade of respectability masking the instinct to breed, Alpha and Omega, heat cycles, the carnal urge... 

… which she felt just as strongly. Eunice had been thirteen when she’d first “fallen ill,” and the gradual change in her scent had caught Edith’s attention very quickly, till it had been all she could think about as she and her father made small talk. By the time the others noticed and Mrs. McMichael was helping the flushed, feverish Eunice to bed, Edith had been rather red herself, weak in the knees with her heart racing. 

It wouldn’t be until a year and a half later that she would admit how _delicious_ she had looked.

* * *

“I’ve been doing some reading, Father,” she said over dinner a few hours later. Her father lowered his knife and fork to listen to what she had to say. Edith stared down at her own plate, trying to choose her words with the utmost care. They’d had conversations like this before, all of them ending the same way. “I’d like to try one of the… the treatments they have. For women like me.” She could already read the expression on her father’s face, one she’d seen too many times.

“Edith…” He covered her hand with his own. “Do you know how many of these so-called doctors have come before me begging an investment?”

“But they’re --” she began.

“-- nd do you know why I haven’t backed _one_ of them? Because they’re not safe.” He gave her an earnest look. “The women who use these products put themselves at terrible risk. Many die.” 

She couldn’t argue with what he was saying. But if he knew what it was like to be seen as fundamentally useless… his answer would have been different, she knew. But he only wanted the best for her, and there would be no way she could change his mind, so she demurred with a _yes, Father,_ and then turned the subject to her plans to send her manuscript to _The Atlantic._

“I’ll type it on your typewriter, Father,” she said. “I don’t want anything, not even my handwriting, to give me away.”

* * *

“I don’t understand how you can concentrate through all this noise,” said her father, laying a hand briefly on Edith’s shoulder as he passed by the desk that she had arranged for herself: typewriter before her, manuscript to the side. She shrugged, grinning as she carefully pressed her finger into the first key.

“Oh, that’s handsome,” she said to herself as the letter appeared on the page in jet-colored ink. She went on typing, growing in confidence as the clacking of the keys quickened in succession. Occasionally she would leave the typewriter altogether and make revisions in pen on her manuscript, not wanting to use any phrase that was less than perfect in her typed copy. Hmm. Was it truly in character for Cavendish to let Sophie go into the forest on her own, or would he insist on accompanying her? Lost in the dilemma, she didn’t notice the figure standing in front of her desk until he coughed. Blue eyes flicked up to meet eyes just as blue. 

“I’m sorry,” the man before her said, balancing his top hat under one arm while removing his gloves. She realized with a start that he was English. “I’m looking for a Carter Cushing, but I wasn’t told where he was in the building.”

“Oh,” she said, a little resentful for being dragged away from her work. “He’s probably upstairs. The third door on the right.”

“Thank you,” he said. To her irritation, he didn’t immediately go for the staircase. “Tell me,” he went on, nodding to the stack of paper beside her that was her manuscript, “you don’t have to transcribe all of that, do you?” He smiled.

“It’s hardly a chore,” she said shortly. “It’s mine.”

“Yours?” He looked astonished, the way most people did when she told them she’d written a novel and was planning another one. Reaching a hand out towards it, he hesitated. “May I?” With a look of longing at the typewriter, fingers itching to return to what she’d been doing, she nodded tersely. As he reached over, she caught his scent: rough, dark, Alpha. 

Ha. That explained her sudden animosity, at any rate. Not that she’d met many men who _weren’t_ Alphas. But the strength of his scent was surprising, particularly in one so slight. 

His eyes roved over the first page. A rustling sound told her that he’d turned the page, was continuing. Edith stared hard at the table, disliking having her work read in front of her. 

“This is…” He sounded… well, surprised wasn’t quite the word, perhaps. Perhaps taken aback. “This is… you have a very strong voice.”

“I do?” In spite of herself, she caught his eye and hated how eager she’d suddenly felt. “I was told that it was too strong.”

“Whoever told you that, don’t listen.” He held the pages back out to her. “This is your first foray into the literary world?”

“Yes.”

“Then I would say that you have a natural gift.” 

She took the pages from him, bemused and angry at how quickly her pulse had elevated. Every time someone gave her a compliment… well. That was because it happened so rarely. 

“Thank you,” she said, settling back into her chair. “Er, didn’t you say you had an appointment?”

“I’m rather early actually,” he said, smiling apologetically. “Oh, forgive me. What you must think of me, demanding to read your manuscript and not giving you my name.” He held out a hand. “Sir Thomas Sharpe. I’m here on business.” Well-spoken, English, fine clothes, _Sir_ … with a start, Edith realized that this must be the baronet that Mrs. McMichael had mentioned the other day. It gave her a good deal of cathartic joy to think of how the woman would feel if she’d heard what he’d said: _I’m here on business._ No mention of her daughter at all. But then, that would hardly be the way of a wealthy Alpha courting a wife. 

Realizing that he was still holding his hand out to her, she took it, noting a rather strange look come into his eyes for a moment. He exhaled. 

“Edith Cushing,” Edith said, and he looked surprised.

“Carter Cushing’s daughter?” he asked. She nodded, wondering how much he’d heard about her. If he spent as much time with the McMichaels as Mrs. McMichael would no doubt like the world to believe, he’d probably heard something of her _condition_. Perhaps that explained the odd change in his countenance when she’d taken his hand. The idea that he knew exactly what she was left her feeling somehow disappointed. For some frivolous reason, she thought she might have enjoyed it if Thomas Sharpe had thought her an Omega. If only for a little while.

She pushed that thought cleanly out of her head. 

“You should probably go up,” she said. “My father doesn’t like lateness.”

“Of course,” he said. “It was a pleasure.” 

She nodded, unsure of how to reply, and breathed a private sigh of relief when he finally moved to the staircase. After quickly casting about to ascertain that there was no one to see, she laid the back of her hands against her cheeks in an effort to cool the flush. 

_What is_ wrong _with me?_ she wondered. _I never flush with an Alpha._

* * *

Thinking about the encounter in her father’s offices had cast a pall over the rest of Edith’s day. She went through the motions readily enough but was internally going over and over her meeting with Thomas Sharpe. It didn’t make any sense! Why had she grown so flustered? She _was_ an Alpha; she was quite sure of that. Perhaps she was falling sick.

Her father had noticed how downcast and distracted she was and now came knocking on her bedroom door. 

“You know,” he said, sitting down on her bed beside her, “no one would think less of you if you decided not to go tonight.” 

The McMichaels were holding a gala that night and had been planning it for weeks. Edith stared up at her ceiling, feeling stressed and awkward in her silk gown.

“No, I’ll go,” she said. “It would be rude to refuse at the last minute.”

There was a sudden clamor of male voices downstairs and her father stood.

“That’ll be Alan,” he said, then hesitated. “Now, know that you’re under no obligation. But I think that if you were to marry --”

“Father, we’ve spoken about this. I _like_ Alan, but not enough to bind myself to him forever.” Edith went to her mirror and adjusted the placement of several blonde curls. “If I marry -- or if I fall in love -- I want to feel -- I don’t know… as though I have a part to play. I want to feel _needed._ And I would never have that with Alan.”

“Well, Edith,” said her father, who knew what she was driving at and now felt slightly uncomfortable, “if… if you find a young lady with whom --” He stopped. “My first priority is your happiness. Just please be careful.”

She knew that he meant what he said, as it applied to her. Society took a dim view of women who turned to other women where a man would do, but that was the only medium through which she would likely be able to find a partner. 

“Thank you, Father.”

“Now,” said her father in a lighter tone, stretching. “We must get downstairs and collect Alan and that Sir Thomas.” 

“Sir Thomas is here?” she said, brow furrowing in surprise as she followed him out the door.

“Yes, he had business at the office. And since he’s coming to the gala anyway, it was only practical to take him along.” Her father gave her a sidelong glance at the top of the stairs. “Why do you ask?”

“I just wondered,” said Edith, feeling suddenly self-conscious. 

Alan and Sir Thomas were waiting at the foot of the staircase for them, coats shiny with rain. Again, Edith found herself growing rather hot under the Baron’s gaze and wondered what was wrong with her. 

“Sir Thomas, Alan.” She nodded to them quickly, hoping to avoid lengthy conversation. 

“You’ll be the belle of the ball,” Alan said with a smile.

“Actually, I feel a little unwell.” 

Was it just her, or had Sir Thomas gone slightly red? Then she realized what he must have thought she meant. Why couldn’t they just say _heat_ and dispense with those euphemisms that only caused confusion…

“That is,” she continued, trying to amend what she’d said before, “I’m a little tired.”

There was a tight silence and Edith did her best to not appear self-conscious. She’d had many years of practice at it. 

“Shall we on?” her father suggested finally, and the others seemed to accept with relief.

* * *

Edith was not quite as prepared as she should have been for the crush there was at the McMichael’s. Mrs. McMichael always gave quite extravagant dinners, balls, galas, what-have-you, but she seemed to have outdone herself this time. Flowers adorned every corner, every surface had been polished to utmost brilliance, and guests filled every available room in the townhouse. And at the center of it all was Mrs. McMichael herself, bony clavicle bedecked with pearls and her teeth bared in a smile: the image of a mother with a marriageable daughter.

It was still a shock to see so many heads turn in her direction when she entered the drawing room on Sir Thomas’s arm -- although the shock was likely due more to her shattering nerves after being confined in a carriage opposite the Baron, his confusing scent flooding her senses.

He drew off her cape and there it was again: Alpha, but somehow more engaging to her. She caught his eye and he looked away. Hm. He was a strange one, this baron. 

“Baron!” To Edith’s horror, Mrs. McMichael was swanning over to welcome them. Sir Thomas kissed her hand and gave her a brief bow -- eliciting a giggle that sounded almost girlish -- and then the woman turned to Edith. “And little Edith. How nice to see you again.” One didn’t need to see the suddenly frozen smile pasted on the woman’s face to know that her appearance was not wholly welcome. Especially on the arm of her daughter’s suitor. As Mrs. McMichael brushed past to greet Edith’s father and Alan, Edith noticed Eunice standing near the back of the crowd, nervously trying to catch Sir Thomas’s eye. 

Sir Thomas placed a gentle hand at the center of her back.

“Come meet my sister,” he said. For a wild moment, Edith thought he meant Eunice; then she saw the tall, dark-haired woman beside her and wondered how she’d failed to notice her before. Her gown was a deep, bloody red, and those eyes -- Edith found herself unable to meet them for more than a few seconds. 

“This is my sister, Lucille. Lucille, this is Miss Edith Cushing.”

“I’m pleased to meet you, Miss Cushing.” They shook hands and immediately Edith caught her scent: Omega. She seemed very closed-off, though, which was rare from what Edith had seen. When Sir Thomas leaned over to kiss her cheek, she smiled just a little. Her eyes flashed back to Edith, who looked away and fought the urge to blush. This Lucille had the scent of one who was recovering from a heat, which in turn was beginning to set Edith off. 

“How -- how are you?” she asked, turning to Eunice to cover for herself. Eunice very pointedly did not reply, which didn’t surprise Edith very much. After it had become apparent what Edith was, Eunice had begun to distance herself from her.

“Please, everyone!” Mrs. McMichael was at the center of things once again, clapping her hands and smiling. “Make some space! We’ll have some dancing now!” She turned, seemingly without design, to Sir Thomas. “Baron, if you’d like to open…?”

The Baron laughed a little self-consciously -- again, rather strange.

"I'm sure that's not --"

"Baron, I  _insist_ ," she said. 

"I merely --"

"Baron, must I take onto this floor myself?" Mrs. McMichael said in mock affront. There was a murmur of laughter around the room, but Edith didn't join in, sensing his self-consciousness. Beside her, Lucille's jaw tightened.

"Alright then," he said, laughing tightly again. He turned to Edith. 

“Miss Cushing, will you do me the honor?”

All conversation in the room seemed to die at once and Edith found herself unsure that she’d heard him correctly. There was no possible way that he could have asked to her dance with him. Not her. He was courting Eunice _._ Good God, Eunice was by far the most practical match: with wealth and a womb that wouldn’t fail them --

Aware that she’d suddenly jumped from a single dance to marriage and children, Edith drew in the reins on her thoughts and smiled. It would appear rude if she refused, after all.

“Of course,” she said, and took his hand. She was dimly aware of a ripple of murmuring sweeping around the room -- _does he_ know _about her?_ \-- but somehow, when he escorted her into the center of the floor and she placed her hand on his shoulder, none of what they said seemed to matter. 

“Why are we doing this?” she murmured.

“Why not?” he said. 

The band struck up a waltz, and it was as if they’d been born for the dance, their feet flying with ease across the floor, Edith’s skirts sweeping just so. But after a moment, Edith realized that he was not leading her; rather, he was allowing her to direct them both across the highly polished wood. A touch of anger rose within her. It felt too much as if he were humoring both her and her condition. But anger was quickly overruled by her other feelings. Satisfaction. Pride, almost. Confidence. Was this how male Alphas felt every day? It was intoxicating. 

The Baron was shaking very slightly and when she met his eyes mid-whirl, she saw nervousness lingering there and wondered at it. 

Another whirl and suddenly she caught the edge of a scent, coming quite clearly from the Baron, but not… well… it couldn’t be… it couldn’t be right. The Alpha scent was still there. But a flame began to kindle in her belly at her detection of it and she recognized both the feeling and the scent itself. 

She’d scented it on Eunice before, on women in the street, a strong shadow of it in Lucille.

Sir Thomas was an Omega. 

* * *

 

The shock of it wouldn’t leave her brain for the rest of the evening. It wasn’t that she couldn’t understand why he was masquerading as an Alpha -- God knew, she could understand that. It was simply that… well… _why?_ Why would he come overseas ostensibly to court Eunice if there was no chance at all that they’d have children? She wasn’t stupid; it was common knowledge, if not commonly addressed, how male Omegas became, well, pregnant. Not with women. And certainly not an Omega woman. 

Now that she knew, she wondered how the others didn’t catch on. As Sir Thomas obligingly took Mrs. McMichael’s arm to lead her into dinner, she found it impossible that the woman couldn’t realize. Walking with her father behind them, she was all-too-conscious both of his scent -- confusing, making her feel antagonistic even as it tantalized her -- and of what Mrs. McMichael was saying to him, just quietly enough that only those in the immediate vicinity could hear. 

“Such a lovely girl, too. Of course, it _is_ as shame that she’ll never marry, if you know what I mean. A sworn spinster. But of course, one can’t have everything, can one?” 

Edith clenched her jaw and said nothing as the baron pulled Mrs. McMichael’s chair out for her. She found herself hoping as she herself sat that he’d pull it out from beneath her and send her sprawling. 

She felt his eyes on her several times throughout dinner; they were fleeting, yet curious glances, as if the dance and what Mrs. McMichael had said had only sparked his curiosity. And when they were, at last, saying their goodbyes, the rest of the party took good note of how his lips brushed her fingers, their hands lingering just a shade longer than what was deemed proper. The Omega scent was strong in her nose now, and she couldn’t believe that she’d not noticed it earlier. Off to the side, Eunice watched with her mother, a look of dismay on her face. 

Lucille said goodbye as well, arm linked with her brother’s. Once more, Edith wanted to both look away and drink her in. The raw scent of her was quite heady as they shook hands. And Lucille did not once take her eyes from her face.

“A pleasure, Miss Cushing,” she said. “Perhaps we could meet one day soon and take a stroll? I hear there are some lovely parks here in the city. It would be a shame to miss them.”

“I would love to,” said Edith, her heart fluttering at the thought.

* * *

Inside the carriage on the way home, Edith’s father gave her an assessing look.

“Why did the baron dance with you?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Are you sure?”

“Father, _I_ did not ask _him_.” 

Her father settled back against the upholstery and said nothing more, leaving Edith to gaze out the carriage window at the orange street lamps that floated by and wonder what the two of them were doing -- why they had come to Buffalo, and why, in spite of herself, they had captured her imagination so completely.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Am I a fool,” she said at last, “for hoping?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just want to give a shout-out to inanesanity/mjolnir-s-master for being my sounding board for all the A/O craziness and also the plot. Also to RedFlagsAndDiamonds/shakespeareia for further sounding board stuff and also supplying me with all my Victorian needs. Y'all are great.

“Thank you for your letter,” said Edith, meeting Sir Thomas and his sister by one of the benches in the closest park in Buffalo. “And thank you for your invitation.” She felt slightly out of place in her bright walking dress beside the two Englanders, who looked like a pair of crows in a field.

“Not at all,” said Lucille. She held out a gloved hand, the lace of her sleeves covering it to her knuckles. “Come, walk with us.”

They must have cut a singular figure as they went: white and yellow, black and red, with two lace parasols open like flowers beneath the sun. Between them, Edith felt walled in by their respective scents: raw and sweet, in an animal sort of way.

“Does Mrs. McMichael often give galas?” Sir Thomas asked. 

“If there’s not one at least every two months, then something is wrong.” They smiled, Sir Thomas laughing quietly. In the distance, two children shrieked in play. Lucille murmured an excuse and suddenly swept off into the trees with a rustle of satin. Edith watched her go, perplexed. “Is she alright?”

“She likes to be alone,” said Sir Thomas. “I shouldn’t worry.” They walked in silence for a while, taking in the nature and the people around them. A breeze ruffled the yellowing leaves of the trees. 

“I’m sorry for how Mrs. McMichael pressured you into opening the dance,” Edith said after a few minutes. “I could see how uncomfortable you were. She can be… overbearing.”

“Not at all,” said Sir Thomas, but he did not look at her. 

“It’s merely that --” she stopped. This had been weighing on her for the last days since the gala. “Baron --”

“Call me Thomas, please.”

“Thomas,” she repeated uncertainly. “It’s merely that I’m sure you were flustered and so turned to me because I was nearest. I don’t -- what I’m trying to say is that I don’t expect any sort of --”

Thomas frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“A - a girl like me,” she tried. “I’m sure you didn’t know at the time. Mrs. McMichael no doubt tried to tell you afterward, but --”

“I’m -- I’m sorry.” He was smiling in confusion. “I really don’t understand your meaning…”

“That I’m an _Alpha,_ ” she said, a trifle too loudly. She’d lost patience and now blushed as several people in the vicinity turned to look at her in distaste. One didn’t discuss such things, particularly with a man who was practically a stranger. “Forgive me, I shouldn’t have --” she stammered as Thomas went bright red himself. 

“No, it’s alright,” he said softly. “Perhaps that explains --” He cut himself off. “I don’t -- that doesn’t matter to me. I don’t -- oh god.” He stopped short. “You can probably…” When he spoke again, his voice was even more hesitant. “Do you know?”

It was a chilly autumn day, but Edith felt as though someone had set her head on fire.

“About you?” she whispered and he nodded. “Yes,” she said. “I know.”

“You’ve not told anyone?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I know too well what that’s like.”

He gazed at her for a moment, lips parted in shock, and then averted it to the leaves at their feet.

“Thank you,” he murmured. Now that she had the opportunity to study his features at length, she thought she could detect the hints of the Omega in his face -- a smoothness of the lips, perhaps a faint girlishness in the curl of his lashes. 

“Do you mind if I ask a question?” she asked. He looked back up at her, one eyebrow lifted. “Why are you courting Eunice if…?” Thomas’s face took on a hooded expression.

“I’m here on business,” he said, and that was the end of it.

* * *

Lucille was sitting beneath an elm tree when Edith found her, a book in her hand and her hat resting beside her, pins and gloves resting neatly on the brim. The breeze had stirred strands of her hair so they hung loosely around her face. She looked like a pre-Raphaelite painting come to life. Upon seeing Edith approach, she shielded her eyes against the glare of the sun.

“Where did my brother go?” she asked. 

“We met Dr. McMichael and he fell into conversation,” said Edith. “I got bored, so. I went to find you.” Lucille smiled, slight yet genuine, and patted the expanse of grass beside her. Neatly tucking her skirts beneath her, Edith sat down. “What are you reading?” she asked. Lucille marked her place and turned the cover towards her so she could see. _The Picture of Dorian Gray._ Edith raised her eyebrows in surprise.

“Mr. Wilde pushes the boundaries of what is considered seemly,” Lucille said. “I appreciate that.” She gave her a sidelong glance: dark and lovely. “You’re shocked?”

“I try not to be. I’d like to read it, but…”

“But you worry that it wouldn’t help your current place in the social circle,” Lucille finished. At Edith’s open mouth, she continued. “Nothing stays a secret with Mrs. McMichael in the room, Miss Cushing.”

“Edith.”

“Edith, then.” She smiled again, but this time it was a little, well, snakelike. “But beyond what Mrs. McMichael told me, I already knew. The moment we met.”

“Oh,” said Edith weakly. Then: “You’re very open about this sort of thing.”

“Does that make you uncomfortable?”

“No, I think that’s how it should be.” Lucille still smiled. Now she leaned back against the tree, closing her eyes. 

“It’s a vicious world, Edith,” she said, almost lazily. “Full of the devoured and the devouring. It can swallow you up, if you let it.” Unsure of how to reply, Edith dropped her gaze to Lucille’s hand, bare, the skin soft and pale against the grass. Bare. Soft. Almost in curiosity, Edith inched forward with her own fingers till they brushed the tips of Lucille’s own. Lucille opened her eyes again. “I doubt I’m what you’re looking for,” she murmured and leaned over. Her lips brushed against Edith’s cheek and she caught the edge of a familiar scent: rough, dark. 

“You’re an Alpha,” Edith whispered. Lucille nodded.

“I’m afraid so.”

A thousand emotions flashed through her: understanding, confusion, fascination, but also disappointment. She’d been so certain that… that Lucille wouldn’t have minded her attentions. But there they were. Lucille gazed at her for a few long moments.

“I apologize if I’ve caused any distress on your part,” she said. “I just wanted you to know before you did anything that you’d come to regret.” Then she looked up, past Edith, and smiled one of her rare, genuine smiles. “My brother is returning. Shall we?” 

* * *

Working in her father’s office so often meant that Thomas would come to dinner, along with Lucille, several other select few of her father’s associates, and, occasionally, the McMichaels. Although normal for the season, the influx of company made Edith exhausted and long for the lazy summer evenings of dining solely with her father.

_Perhaps I_ am _meant to just take care of him and grow old alone,_ she thought to herself, staring into the glowing fireplace one evening. She, Mrs. McMichael, Eunice, and Lucille had all withdrawn into the parlor, leaving the men to whatever they discussed when the women were out of earshot, and now behind her, she could hear the low murmur of conversation. As hostess, it was rude of her to neglect her guests and she had half a mind to go on and join them, but her intentions were foiled by Lucille, drifting over with a whisper of silk. 

“You’re very quiet tonight,” she murmured. Edith smiled at her and then looked back at the flames. 

“I’m merely tired,” she said and stifled a yawn. Lucille seemed momentarily like a demon, the fire glowing red-orange on her skin, more muted on her black gown. “You don’t wear much color, do you?” she said spontaneously. “Forgive me, I just realized and wondered at it.”

“I consider myself,” said Lucille, voice very low, “in a state of perennial mourning.” Edith frowned.

“What happened?”

But she merely shook her head.

“It was long ago.” When she looked up, she was smiling again; Edith was struck by how lovely she really was. “We do what we can to survive, ladies like us. Don’t we?” And Edith smiled, nodding. It was so freeing to talk to another woman this way.

“We do.”

Lucille opened her mouth to speak, but at that moment the door to the parlor opened and the men filed in, looking like a flock of stately birds in their black and white. Thomas, near the front, saw the two of them at the fireplace and immediately joined them. In her periphery, Edith saw Mrs. McMichael and Eunice exchange worried glances.

“Lucille, Edith.” 

“Hello.” They caught each other’s gaze and Thomas looked away first, lips twitching. 

“Miss Sharpe, I don’t suppose you could give us a tune?” That was Edith’s father, speaking from where he stood with the McMichaels. Lucille smiled in the manner that Edith was quickly recognizing as her public smile and, with a murmured excuse to Edith and Thomas, went to the piano near the window.

As Chopin twinkled from the corner, Edith looked back to Thomas, who was watching his sister play. 

“How are you?” she murmured. His eyes flicked back to her, warm and gentle. 

“Well. And yourself?”

“Well.” 

“What were you and Lucille speaking of?” Thomas asked. He braced a hand on the mantle, inclining towards her. Edith breathed in through her nose, just enough that she knew Thomas could hear it and saw him smile a little. A little thrill went through her. 

“I asked her why she wore so little color,” Edith said. “She didn’t like to say.”

Thomas glanced down, into the fireplace. 

“Life hasn’t been kind to her, I’m afraid.”

“I’m sure the same could be said for you.” Edith sank into the chaise nearest the fire and, at her encouraging nod, Thomas joined her there. There was a good amount of space between them, but to Edith, the scent of him made it seem as though he were directly beside her, breathing against her neck. 

“No,” said Thomas, staring at his knees. “But we manage somehow. Tell me,” he said, his tone losing some of its wistfulness, “how do they treat you? Here in the city?”

Edith bit her lip and stared up at the ceiling. 

“They tolerate me,” she said. “Only because I am Carter Cushing’s daughter, of course. If we weren’t rich, I wouldn’t be so lucky.”

“They’ve never tried to, well --” He hesitated. “ _Fix_ you?”

“No…” Now she gazed at him in concern. “Why do you…”

But he didn’t directly reply and Edith remembered what he had said: _life hasn’t been kind to her._ In the corner, Lucille still played, now shifting to Debussy. Her back was very straight, hands placed just so on the keys. Stately, like a queen on her throne. Thomas was watching her too, his eyes tender. 

“Is this why you masquerade?” Edith whispered, leaning in a little more closely. Over Thomas’s shoulder, she was acutely aware of Mrs. McMichael glaring at her. Thomas nodded, unaware. 

“It makes everything easier,” he said, turning back to her. “I don’t like to be looked at. If I can make my way through a crowd unnoticed, I call it a job well done.”

“I know what you mean.” Edith tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Then she laughed, a little lost. “It’s sort of sad, isn’t it?”

He was gazing at _her_ now and Edith found herself both startled and delighted to see the tentative yet unmistakable want in his eyes. Then he broke the glance, looking down at his knees once more.

“Yes. Yes, it is.” 

He said goodbye to her that evening and held her gaze as he kissed her hand as if there were nothing else worth looking at. Beside him, Lucille gave her a nod and one of those rare, genuine smiles. When the door closed behind the final guest, she became aware that her father was gazing at her from the doorway, his brow furrowed. 

“Father?”

He seemed about to say something, but then shook his head, and retreated back to the dining room. 

* * *

She saw Thomas a day later in her father’s offices, jacket over the back of a chair as he demonstrated the proportions of his machine to a group of intrigued engineers.

“And here you see we’d need to allow for changes in --” He stopped short and smiled as he caught sight of Edith there in the doorway, nodding. Then he turned back to the lecture. “Changes in the weight of the load to be carried.” One of the engineers asked him a question, but as he listened, his eyes flicked back to Edith. She stayed for a while to listen to him speak, but also to bathe in the feeling of power, of drawing his gaze back to her with any movement there in the doorway of the workroom. He couldn’t seem to stop sneaking glances. 

_What am I doing?_ she thought to herself. _It’s Eunice he’s courting. Not me._

But as Thomas’s gaze slid towards her once more, it was very easy to convince herself that the opposite was true. 

_God, but I could devour him_ , she thought. _Like a strawberry on a summer day._

As if he had heard her thought, Thomas bit his lip and turned his gaze to the machine model. His lower lip blossomed quite red and it took all of Edith’s will not to lean against the door frame and watch it fade back to normal.

* * *

Rumor spread like plague throughout their social circles until one day, Mrs. McMichael came to call. Sweeping into the parlor, the woman sank onto the couch to Edith’s irritation and declined her offer of tea.

“No thank you, child. I won’t stay long.”

Edith looked with longing at the book she’d been reading -- Lucille had lent her _Dorian Gray_ \-- and pressed her lips into a smile.

“To what do I owe this unexpected visit?”

“I think you know very well,” the woman said and her tone became even chillier. Edith straightened into an upright position and lifted her chin.

“Do continue.”

“My daughter,” she began, eyes sharp as she clenched her reticule in her gloved hands, “will not face competition from someone like you. I simply cannot allow it.”

“I see,” Edith said coldly.

“The Baron has a _title_ ,” Mrs. McMichael went on, spitting the word out. “Do you really think that he could marry you even if he wished to? What could you offer him? Not the heir he needs, I can assure you of that.”

_Neither can Eunice,_ Edith thought but held her tongue.

“Because he has continued to see you, I can only assume that he is unaware of your… condition,” she said stiffly. “You must _make_ him aware.”

“No need. I thought you made it quite plain yourself at the gala last week,” said Edith, unable to stand it any longer. “If he has continued to see me, then that is his prerogative. I have done nothing to sway him. Perhaps,” she added, her tirade finally coming to the surface, “it wasn’t so much a preference to me as it was the prospect of having a mother-in-law who looks at him like you do.” Two spots of color appeared on Mrs. McMichael’s cheeks and her scent wafted up, angry.

“You have meddled in my family’s affairs for quite long enough,” she hissed. “First Alan and now you attempt to ruin Eunice’s chances at a husband. Well. I can assure you that both my son and the Baron will see the error of their decisions. No one could want someone like you.” Edith’s pulse roared in her ears; she sat stock-still in the armchair, jaw clenched. 

“And why is that?” she said through gritted teeth. 

“You’re useless,” said Mrs. McMichael primly and stood as well, reticule in hand. “I hope I have made myself clear?”

“ _Quite_.”

“Very good.” The woman glanced down at _Dorian Gray_. She sniffed. “I might have known.”

And then she had left the room as quickly as she’d entered it. Edith bit the inside of her cheek. Her nails dug small crescents into her palms. It hadn’t been what she’d said about Thomas -- no, the slap in the face had been the reiteration of what had been her private fear all her life. That she was, in fact, broken.

* * *

“Annie mentioned that Mrs. McMichael called.” Edith’s father settled into his armchair later that evening, lighting a cigar. Rain hissed on the roof outside. “What did she want?” Edith looked up from _Dorian Gray_ and sighed.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Edith?” He peered at her in concern. “What happened?”

She didn’t immediately reply, closing her book and staring at the back cover for several moments. 

“Am I a fool,” she said at last, “for hoping?”

Her father had not been blind to what was happening and so did not need to ask what she meant. 

“Dear,” he said gently, “he needs an heir.”

“You too?” she asked, dismayed. “Isn’t that -- does it really matter?” The question was a stupid one and she immediately regretted asking it. 

“You know the answer to that,” said her father. He sighed, rubbing at his temples, and when he spoke again, he sounded regretful. “I’m sorry, dear. I know that -- you don’t usually grow so attached so quickly. But he _is_ , well -- you’re just not -- meant to be.”

“Father, he’s not. He’s an Omega.” 

She shouldn’t have said it. She’d promised Thomas she wouldn’t tell anyone. But the urge had been too strong. And there was no other way that he would ever understand _why_ … 

Her father raised his eyebrows.

“He told you?”

“Yes, but I knew it before. Since the gala.” Edith stood and went to the mantle, trying to organize her thoughts. “Father, can’t you see what this means? For me, for both of us? This chance I have…”

“I know.” He went to her, put his hands on her shoulders. “But… no matter what else he may be, he’s still an aristocrat. He needs a son.”

“Yes, but he’s not likely to get one _legally_ , is he?” she snapped and was mildly gratified to see the momentary distaste in her father’s face. “Goodnight.” And she strode from the parlor before he could make any sort of reply.

* * *

Annie had left her post on her desk. After unpinning her hair with several angry jerks, she reached for the letters, in need of some sort of distraction. One from Alan. One from Thomas. She tore open the latter, eager for some sort of word after the day she’d had.

_If you’re available, please meet me tomorrow in the park at one o’clock._

_T.S._

She’d go -- of course she’d go. Nothing that anyone said could stop her. But as she lay back on her bed, she wondered why she bothered. No matter what they were and no matter how they felt, Thomas had a duty to perform. They just weren’t meant for each other, like her father had said. Much in the same way that she and Lucille hadn’t been. Two Alphas… it just wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

A rebellious part of her brain asked if that was such a bad thing. Like marriage without procreating. If you loved a person, if you wanted them, why should it matter if you had children or not?

_Strange_ , she thought, not for the first time. _If I were a man, all of this would work._

* * *

Thomas was waiting for her in the park when she arrived. He smiled tightly, greeting her with a terse nod.  

“What’s happened?” she asked. “You sounded very brief in your letter.”

“Lucille and I sail back for England at the end of this week,” he said in a rush. She stared.

“But -- but you --” She shook herself. “I’m sorry, I -- I hope you have an easy journey.” She knew that Thomas had heard the hollowness of her words. 

“I’m sorry it came so fast,” he said, audibly forcing himself to slow down. “But, you see, perhaps not. Unless --” And here he paused, as if trying to plan what he would say in his head. “Unless something were to happen that would keep us here longer.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Edith.” He placed his hands on her shoulders and she became suddenly aware of Lucille’s absence -- no chaperone except public scrutiny. “Edith, I know that I have absolutely no right to ask this, but -- you see, when I’m with you,” he said, “I feel… complete. We’re both two souls that society doesn’t seem to want. And I’ve… never really liked myself, or thought that I was worth something. Until I met you. And I only hope that…” He trailed off in the face of Edith’s expression: hopeful, disbelieving.

“Are you… are you making me an offer?”

“Yes!” he said, laughing gratefully. “Yes, I want to marry you, Edith.”

But she was nothing if not practical, and that practicality kept her from sweeping him into her arms.

“But your title, you need an heir --”

“No, no, don’t you see? It doesn’t _matter_. We can find a way.” One hand left her shoulder in favor of her hand and he stared down at her palm for a moment, thumb just brushing the underside of her wrist. “And if not,” he continued, “what do we care? I love you. That’s enough.” 

His scent flooded her nose -- excited, nervous -- and he must have caught her own because suddenly his knees gave out and she was holding him. This was the closest they had ever been; his body was hard and lean against hers and suddenly she could no longer hold herself back. She took his lapel in one hand and brought their lips together.

The explosion of scent and sensation nearly made her lose her grip on him. But he was clinging to her, fingers at the backs of her upper arms and she did not hesitate to bring her hands to his jaw, his cheek, to feel him kissing her. She knew the stares they were attracting. One simply didn’t do this…

He came away from her and his eyes were dark and filled with longing. This, Edith knew in the depths of herself, was what she was meant for.

“You’ll have to ask my father for his permission,” she murmured. They were still close enough that both could feel the other’s breath on their face. 

“When?”

“Tonight, before dinner?”

He bit his lip. “I’m not sure that he’ll agree… he isn’t terribly fond of me.”

“But he _is_ terribly fond of _me_ ,” said Edith, touching his cheek. “That’ll count for something.”

They walked closer afterward, arms linked, no chaperone. And though they eventually spoke of other things, Edith couldn’t help savoring the warmth of his body at her side, feeling that for the first time, the world was within her grasp.

* * *

“Mrs. McMichael, Eunice, Alan.” Edith shook hands with all of them, a bright smile on her face. For once, she did not have to force it to her lips. “So lovely to see you again.” Her father’s friend, Ferguson, was behind them, flanked by several anonymous men in suits. “Mr. Ferguson, always a pleasure. Thank you for coming.” Behind his party was Thomas and Lucille. Edith smiled again. “Sir Thomas. Miss Sharpe.”

“Miss Cushing.” He kissed her hand; Lucille nodded to her with a knowing smile. They were both beautiful. “Where is your father?” he murmured so others couldn’t overhear. Edith opened her mouth to reply, but at the same moment, she heard her father’s voice sound from behind her.

“Everyone here, Edith?”

“Nearly!” She turned to smile and kiss his cheek, expertly extricating her fingers from Thomas’s hand in the same moment. He smiled down at her. When his eye turned to Thomas, the smile didn’t vanish so much as chill. 

“Baron, Miss Sharpe.” 

“Sir,” said Thomas, taking a deep breath. “I wonder if I might have a word with you? In private.” Her father gave him a long look and then nodded. 

“Come into my study,” he said and, already walking, beckoned him along. Thomas followed at his heels, looking over his shoulders to give her a tight smile. She returned it without having to think. 

“Congratulations.” At the sound of Lucille’s voice, Edith turned to her. Then looked at the floor.

“Thank you.”

“You look nervous,” said Lucille, touching her fingers with her own. When Edith met her eyes again, she found herself blushing. “Don’t be. I’m sure your father will approve.”

“I hope so,” said Edith. Lucille took her arm, steel gray satin against her own green silk. “Shall we in?”

“Yes.” Edith felt a twinge of embarrassment at forgetting her duties as hostess. But at the prospect of being officially engaged to Thomas by the end of the evening, such things seemed meaningless.

She was quite conscious of Mrs. McMichael’s eyes on her when they entered the drawing room, particularly at how her arm linked with Lucille’s; no doubt she would receive a private lecture soon about not involving Eunice’s future sister-in-law in any of her more unnatural predilections…

“Where are your father and the Baron, child?” asked Mrs. McMichael from the chaise. Edith, knowing her cue, sat down beside Eunice. Lucille joined her, knees pressed close together as if wanting to take up as little space as possible. It was a habit Edith had noticed a week before and wondered at.

“They had some business to discuss,” she said. “I’m sure they’ll join us shortly.”

“Nothing too serious, I hope?”

“I’m sure not.”

Just then, her father appeared in the doorway of the drawing room. His expression was unreadable.

“Edith, would you join us for a moment?” Mrs. McMichael’s eyes narrowed but she said nothing as Edith stood and followed him out. She caught Lucille’s eye and saw light dancing there.

It was impossible to know what to say as she walked with her father to the study. There was no sign that her father had any thoughts about the proposal at all. Had Thomas even broached the subject? But if he hadn’t, then why would her father request her presence and have her leave their guests unattended? Aware that she was beginning to panic, she did her best to rein herself in. 

Thomas was waiting for them in the study, on his feet and looking as if he’d been pacing. He didn’t meet her gaze as she entered, keeping his eyes trained on her father.

“Sir --”

Without thinking, Edith lay a hand on his arm, a silent signal to say nothing. Now he looked at her, large eyes dark and so suddenly tender she was almost frightened by it.

His father cleared his throat and both of them snapped their attention back to him. He looked weary.

“Edith,” he began, “as I think you are aware, Sir Thomas has made an offer for your hand in marriage.” Edith swallowed, suddenly realizing that she still was holding his arm. But she did not let go. She could feel the steadying of his breath, also calming to her.

“Father?”

“You’ve already made your feelings on his matter quite clear,” said her father, looking down at his desk as if reading something there on the table. “I admit that mine are not quite as enthusiastic. You will not have an easy life if you go through with this.”

“Sir, I believe that something like this -- we shouldn’t hold back for fear of --” Thomas was babbling and his voice died when her father held up a hand.

“If you’ll let me finish, Baron,” he said. “You know the law, Edith. An -- an Alpha --” and he said it with the hesitance one always uses with taboo words -- “may make his -- or her -- own choice. Legally, I can’t stop you. And I will not.”

“Father…” She was staring at him in disbelief. Whatever she’d expected… it hadn’t been this. “Father, I can’t -- thank you. Thank you so much.” He smiled, weary. 

“I want you to be happy.”

“Edith?” Thomas was gazing at her, his scent fluttering tantalizingly in her nose. Reaching into the pocket of his waistcoat, he retrieved an enormous ring: blood-red stone surrounded by elaborate scrolling. She stared in shock at it, then looked back at his face.

“Yes,” she whispered. Out of her periphery, she saw her father tactfully turn his back. “Yes.” The ring slid onto her finger with a cool brush of metal and a sudden drop of weight. 

“It fits you perfectly,” he murmured. 

“It’s so…”

“It’d old. It was my mother’s.” He said this as if it were something that could not be helped. Her hand still rested in his palm, the red stone shining in the dim light of the study. 

“Thomas.” Their lips met, a brush of skin against skin. It took all her willpower to hold back from going further. It was agony, now that she knew how he tasted when he was desperate and wanting. Why starve oneself after a banquet? But they held back and settled for drinking the other in with their eyes. 

Her father went to them, taking her hand.

“Congratulations,” he murmured, pinching her cheek, and Edith suddenly found herself wanting to cry even as she laughed. There were tears in her father’s eyes as well. “We’ll announce it after dinner.”

* * *

But no announcements were necessary, for all Mrs. McMichael needed was to see the great rock on Edith’s finger to go white-lipped with shock and fury.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a longer one this time!

“You have everything you’ll need?” Carter Cushing joined his daughter at the doorway to the dining room, placing a hand on her shoulder.

“I hope so,” Edith surveyed the spread nervously: white tablecloth, crystal glasses, the good china, platters loaded with sandwiches, the coffee things to the side for afterwards. In addition, carefully penned place cards had been laid at every place: Mrs McMichael, Eunice McMichael, Lucille Sharpe.

“I’ll give you privacy,” said her father, “and be at the office.”

“Take refuge, you mean.” Edith was tempted to beg him not to abandon her, or at least allow her to cancel, but that wouldn’t do any good. They had to discuss the wedding preparations at some point, as well as her trousseau. And _that_ thought gave her more of a headache than the thought of the afternoon ahead of her. Couldn’t she just marry him?

“It’ll be fine, I’m sure.” Her father squeezed her shoulder. “It can’t be that bad.”

There was a knock at the front door and the click-clack of footsteps in the hall told them that Annie was hurrying to answer. Edith’s father promptly put on his hat and bid a hasty retreat.

_“Mrs. McMichael, Eunice, welcome. I was just heading to the office. Enjoy the afternoon.”_

Just like that, Edith had been abandoned.

Mother and daughter were shown into the parlor, where Edith met them with polite smiles.

“Thank you so much for coming,” she said. “Please, sit.”

They sat and silence fell.

“Well,” said Mrs. McMichael at last. “This has all been quite a… _shock._ You know, I don’t think I ever dreamed that this day would come. Even now you seem so young. Too young to marry.”

Edith debated whether or not to point out that she was actually a year older than Eunice, but decided against it. Eunice looked unhappy enough and Edith didn’t want to make it seem as though she were lording it over her. Part of her still cared about her and wanted to be friends.

“And yet here we are,” she said in the end.

“Have you chosen a date?”

“November 24. Thomas wanted us to be through our tour so we could settle into the house before Christmas.”

“Ah, that’s right,” said Mrs McMichael, in a musing sort of tone. “I’d quite forgotten you were going away. Life will never be quite the same again, I’m sure.” She smiled thinly. “You know, Eunice and I were remarking on our way here how surprised we were that you accepted.”

“And why should that be surprising?” Inside, Edith willed Lucille to arrive.

“You just never struck either of us as being the sort who would be interested.”

At that moment, Edith’s prayers were answered as Lucille appeared in the drawing-room doorway. Edith leaped to her feet and embraced her with relief.

“And how is the bride-to-be?” asked Lucille with one of her genuine smiles.

“I couldn’t be better.” Lucille took her right hand and curved Edith’s fingers over her own to examine the weighty ring on her finger.

“It becomes you well.”

Suddenly, guiltily, Edith remembered her other guests and reluctantly tore herself away from Lucille and her smile.

“Lunch?”

* * *

“Now, you must have given some thought as to your dress,” said Eunice, taking a sip of her coffee. “I saw some lovely plates the other day in --”

“Actually,” said Edith, “I thought I’d wear my mother’s.” She looked around at the other faces at the table. “Since she can’t be there in person, I’d like to at least wear something of hers. So it’ll remind me.”

No one tried to dispute her decision. Edith took the small miracles where she could find them.

Lucille spoke after a moment, voice tentative and soft.

“And what of your trousseau, Edith?”

Edith had been ready for this one, too.

“We needn’t go to much expense. I’m not terribly concerned about --”

“ _That_ ,” broke in Mrs McMichael from across the table, “is preposterous. As you have no mother of your own, I look on you as one of my own daughters.” Edith privately doubted the veracity of that statement, but let it pass. “And I cannot let you become a Baroness with nothing but the same clothes you wore when you were merely Edith Cushing.”

“I agree,” said Edith, “I merely think that --”

“Now, I took the liberty of bringing some plates with me,” said Mrs McMichael as she reached into her reticule. “I must insist that you at least consider them. There’s a gown here that would look absolutely stunning…”

* * *

“Did you get everything sorted?” asked her father when he came home. Edith was seated on the floor of the drawing room, her manuscript in front of her and her pen poised.

“No, there’s still some plot trouble,” she muttered vaguely, scratching out a few lines. Her father laughed, sitting down on the chaise at her back.

“Well, dear, I meant your imminent wedding but yes, I’m pleased that you’re working on your novel as well.”

She looked up at him.

“We finished the preliminaries,” she said. “The most difficult part will be the dresses in the trousseau. And with those we’ll just be sending the instructions and my measurements to a good dressmaker, so not much trouble at all.” She leaned her head back against the seat cushion of the chaise. “It’s not even a month into the engagement and already I’m tired.”

“I know,” he said, reaching down to squeeze her hand. “It does end, I promise you.”

* * *

_It does end. It does end. It does end._

She repeated the mantra over and over in her head throughout dinner. Thomas sat directly across from her now, Lucille at her side, and every time she looked up at him, he was gazing back at her.

_It does end. It does end. It does end…_

When he came directly to her side after dinner, when her heartbeat tripped over itself as he sat down beside her and took her hand in his own, admiring the ring much in the same way Lucille had, she screamed the words in her head.

_None of this matters; I just want to have you for my own._

“I doubt that my mother would approve of you,” he murmured. The firelight danced over his features. “But then, she didn’t approve of much.” He ran a fingertip delicately over her knuckle and for a moment, it seemed that all other conversation in the room had simply ceased to be, that they were the only ones there. He was sweet and earthy in her nose, more so than usual; Edith pressed her legs close together to combat the sudden pang between them. Their hands were still entwined. In her periphery, she saw Lucille look over her shoulder and then return to her sheet music. Beethoven this time. She took hold of herself: if they weren’t careful, soon everyone in the room would be able to smell it. She disentangled their fingers and made sure she kept her own hands clasped firmly in her lap.

“You don’t,” she said, trying to retrieve the conversation, “speak of her much.”

“No,” said Thomas shortly. Then: “I try not to dwell on the things that hurt. What of your mother?” he added.

“I lost her when I was twelve.” Edith swallowed. “But… sometimes, I feel as though she’s still with me. That she can see everything I’m doing. Watching over me, I suppose.”

“Like a ghost?” asked Thomas with a faint smile. Perhaps it was the firelight, but to Edith, his cheek seemed a little pinker than usual.

“Perhaps. A benevolent one.”

Thomas shifted in his seat a little.

“If my mother has returned as a specter,” he said, “I’d rather remain ignorant of it.”

“What of your father?”

He smiled tightly, staring down at his hands.

“Let’s talk about something else?” he said at last.

Sensing his discomfort, she willingly let the subject go. But she wondered at all he had said and worried. It couldn’t have been easy for either him or his sister to grow up, especially since they were the antithesis of the ideal.

“How is your novel?” he asked abruptly.

“I’m making last-minute revisions,” she said. “The first chapter will be in _The Atlantic_ next Sunday.” Thomas looked delighted.

“That’s wonderful! I look forward to buying a copy and seeing your name in the byline.” Edith laughed quietly.

“Well, thank you, but it won’t be my name,” she explained. “I used a pseudonym so they couldn’t turn me away.”

“What name?”

She bit her lip, half-smiling.

“Edmund Sharpe.”

A slow smile broke across his face and he took her hand again without Edith realizing it.

“E. S,” he murmured. His thumb ran over her palm and again the scent in her nose… it clouded every other sense save for touch. “Well, _Edmund_ ,” he said, grinning, “I look forward to reading your work in the fu--” He stopped suddenly, looking as though he had just swallowed something unpleasant. After a moment, he exhaled hard.

“Are you alright?” asked Edith. Her brow wrinkled in concern.

“I think,” said Thomas, still with an uneasy expression, “that I will need to leave early.” His eyes appeared liquid in the firelight and Edith realized that he was close to tears.

“Thomas…” She placed a hand on his back and felt with a start how hot he was to the touch. But that was nothing compared to the sudden wash of warmth between her thighs. She took her hand away, startled, as their eyes met in silent understanding -- then he shut his eyes as another spasm shook him.

The piano suddenly ceased and Lucille turned abruptly, covering her mouth with the back of her hand.

“Miss Sharpe, are you quite alright?” asked Ferguson from the armchair, concerned. As one, the party turned its attention to Lucille, who look flushed and quite weak.

“No no, it’s fine,” she said, waving off their flurries of worry. “Only,” she added, and looked at her brother, “I think I may need to go home.”

“Yes, of course,” said Thomas, who stood with impressive control and went to her, helping her to stand. As their coats were fetched for them and despite her own concern, Edith fought the urge to applaud in admiration as the siblings’ stratagem unfolded perfectly. Every movement had a purpose. To an onlooker, the arm that Thomas put around Lucille’s shoulders would seem comforting, but in reality she would be supporting him, and their scents would mix. And no one suspected a thing.

They kissed once, very briefly. Thomas had nearly gone after her for more. But that brief instant when their lips touched had been more than enough for Edith to taste the arousal in him, like wine on her tongue.

* * *

Later than night, once the other guests had departed and Edith had bathed and dressed for bed, she fell back on her bed and rubbed at her temples. She wondered when she’d see Thomas again. Most cycles lasted about a week; but Thomas had an image to maintain. He might try to fight through it.

Her face burned hotly in the dim light of her bedroom as she imagine him lying at her side, bare and longing for her. And she’d be a liar if she were to say that she hadn’t wondered what he looked like beneath the layers of clothes about which he was always so meticulous, or what his hands and mouth could do. What she could do for him in return. She and Eunice had sneaked back and forth enough risqué novels throughout their pre-adolescent years for her to be aware of the possibilities.

He’d appeared almost afraid. Edith wished she could be there to hold him, to help him through it. But to her shame, she was aware that his feelings weren’t her immediate concern. No. She wanted to touch him. Hold him, yes, help him, of course, but in the end, they were merely animals.

Was he stripping now, in his suite so far away from her? Was he thinking of her? She could see it in her mind’s eye: Thomas lying back on the bed naked and -- she reached beneath the hem of her nightdress and closed her eyes as her fingertips touched sensitive flesh. Perhaps far away in his room, he did the same as he thought of her, murmured her name…

* * *

She saw him again the next day, to her simultaneous surprise and embarrassment. Working with a serious-looking financier, he gave her a quick smile when she passed by before returning to his work. The hand that held the pen shook just slightly and when she was near enough, she discovered that his scent was quite, quite Alpha.

When she’d caught his eye, she’d been chilled by the terror there.

* * *

Lucille did not appear at dinner for the next five days. Thomas, however, continued to come every evening, looking masterfully in control of his faculties. Edith thought of Lucille sitting alone in her hotel room, cloistered until the week was over, and felt a surge of rage come over her that this charade should even be necessary.

She missed her, not only because without her presence to temper the wedding planning. There was something about her that was… She couldn’t describe it. It left her awake at night and made her confused, made her worry that she was somehow betraying Thomas’s trust with it.

In the evenings, after dinner, she sat with Thomas in front of the fire. They did not talk much. The labor of appearing normal for other people left him with little energy for conversation. It was strange to know that her scent was strong enough to tantalize him as he sat quietly at her side. One evening, after listening to his quiet, labored breath, she took his hand and traced her fingertips over his palm to give him so some sort of relief. He shuddered and met her eyes; Edith saw relief and gratitude there. He’d just wanted to be touched. Around and around and around…

His scent, at once Omega and Alpha, was confusing to her. But she only needed to see his eyes close in faint pleasure to feel a rush of affection for him.

“When we are married,” she murmured, lips close to his ear, “we can be how we want.” He nodded a little drowsily, looking back down at his hand. She ceased her tracing and pressed her own palm against his, threading their fingers together. So soft. So close.

* * *

The next morning, Edith came downstairs to find a vase of red carnations on the breakfast table.

“Sir Thomas brought them early, but he asked me not to wake you,” said Annie when Edith asked. “Oh, and he left this too.” She handed her a small card. Inside, there were merely five words, written in Thomas’s familiar, cramped hand.

_My apologies and my thanks._

* * *

The publication of the first chapter of her novel was received quietly. Thomas and her father were the only ones who had been informed of her pseudonym, but they were quick to offer congratulations.

“I don’t suppose you can tell me what happens next,” Thomas said teasingly one day in the park. By now, he’d recovered. Edith laughed, spinning her parasol between her gloved hands.

“ _No_ , you’ll have to wait for next week.”

“You should know that a lady never tells, Thomas,” said Lucille from beside Edith. They exchanged smiles.

“Even when that lady’s name is Edmund.” Thomas quipped. Edith leaned over and kissed him.

* * *

“I do love this violet one. Try it next, Edith,” said Eunice rather excitedly. Her mother had left Edith’s bedroom momentarily and now she came alive, admiring the gowns spread around the room. Edith laughed from where she stood on a stool at the center of the room, various seamstresses pinning and tucking.

“You look lovely,” came Lucille’s voice from where she was seated on Edith’s bed, limbs gathered close as usual. “You make me wish that I was a bride.” Edith threw her a look over her shoulder, a quick flash of teeth, before turning back to face front again.

“Nearly there,” said one of the seamstresses. Mrs. McMichael reentered the room.

“Oh, how much like a lady you look,” she exclaimed, clapping her hands together. Fighting the urge to slap her, Edith merely lifted her arms in a “look at me” gesture.

“Well, I’m just glad I pass inspection,” she said sweetly.

Despite the thinly-veiled insult, Edith did have to agree that she felt more grown-up and dignified than she could ever remember feeling before. This frock was a deep gold, with the narrow bodice and wide sleeves that she favored. In all honesty, she quite liked her trousseau, with the possible exception of a jacket Mrs McMichael had likely chosen out of revenge: green velvet and bizarre gold spheres dangling haphazardly around the collar. At least it was warm. She’d wear it when it snowed.

“Finished,” said one of the seamstresses. “You said the violet next?”

“Yes.” Edith smiled at Eunice’s poorly-disguised look of excitement. If she wanted to live vicariously through her wedding, Edith would not stop her.

“Here, I’ll help you.” Lucille rose from her place on Edith’s bed and went with her behind the screen. The violet dress was smooth in Edith’s arms. “Only a few weeks,” Lucille murmured as she helped unbutton Edith from the gold gown. “Are you nervous?”

“No,” she whispered back, lifting her arms so Lucille could pull the dress over her head. “If it had been left to me, I would have done it long ago.” She shivered a little in the chilly air; her underthings seemed a flimsy protection against both the cold and Lucille’s gaze, which was all too warming in ways that Edith found she did not want to consider. They locked eyes for a moment, blue in blue, and then Lucille’s gaze shifted as if magnetically drawn to her throat, then the swell of Edith’s breasts beneath her corset.

“Do you need some help, girls?”

The sound of Mrs McMichael spurred them back into action -- Lucille tore her eyes away, lifting the violet gown over her head. It settled around Edith, welcome warmth after the chill, but she was more aware of her nipples hardening at the sensation of Lucille’s breath on the back of her neck as she did up the buttons of the gown. Her hands left her, there was a brief pause, and then Lucille lay them flat on Edith’s stomach. Edith held back a gasp, stiffening. Then she relaxed into it, leaning back. For the briefest moment, she felt Lucille’s body flush against her own, breasts against her shoulder blades. A breath, taken simultaneously. _In, out._

Mrs. McMichael asked for them again and Edith stepped out of Lucille’s embrace. She couldn’t look at her.

The cries of surprise and smattering of applause told her that no one had noticed her flush. But Edith was too aware of it, as well as of the fading ache in her breasts, and the _worry_ \-- were things different, she wouldn’t have questioned it, but she was marrying _Thomas_. She couldn’t let herself be conflicted by his sister. It wouldn’t be right.

Lucille’s eyes were on her as she retook her place upon Edith’s bed.

* * *

Alan was waiting downstairs with Edith’s father, waiting take his mother and his sister home. He smiled when he saw Edith.

“Edith, would you like to talk a walk?”

* * *

“I’m happy for you. Really,” Alan said as they strolled down the street outside Edith’s house together. A carriage rattled past and Edith stepped to the side to avoid the spray of mud that the wheels stirred up.

“Thank you.”

“I know that you’ve never really… felt the same way as I do,” he said, “and honestly… honestly, it’s alright.” He gave her a wry smile. “I doubt that Mamma would have allowed it anyway. I’m sorry how she’s been treating you,” he added suddenly. “I keep trying to tell her --”

“Really, it’s fine,” said Edith. “Whenever she says something, I just remind myself that I only have a few more weeks and then I never have to listen to her again.” Alan’s smile faltered.

“I really will miss you,” he said, coming to a stop. She smiled uneasily, nodding. Alan was so accomplished at hiding his feelings that she often forgot how deeply his affection for her ran. And when it did show, she was horribly taken aback by it and awkward.

“I’ll miss you too,” she said. An awkward pause and then she wrapped her arms around him in a tight embrace, not caring who saw and disapproved. They were friends, first and foremost. “I’ll be sure to write.”

“Be careful,” said Alan, pressing his cheek against hers.

“Why?” Her forehead wrinkled as she looked at him in confusion.

“I… I don’t know,” he said, stepping back from her. He passed a hand over his face “I don’t know why I said that. Just… take care. Will you do that for me?”

She laughed a little, squeezing his shoulder.

“Alright.” He embraced her again. “You _will_ be at the wedding, won’t you?” she said after a moment.

“Yes, of course.”

“I’m only saying that you _will_ see me again.” Alan laughed and stepped away.

“Of course. Again, my congratulations.”

They walked on and Edith realized that there _were_ things that she would miss about Buffalo. Her father, Alan, the busy streets she knew like the back of her hand. A lump grew in her throat. God only knew when she’d see her home again.

 _But I’m going to a_ new _home,_ she told herself. _And Thomas and Lucille will be there too._

And that was reassuring.

* * *

Edith took a deep breath as she stared at her reflection in her mirror. The wedding gown was heavy on her frame, a weight to which she was unaccustomed. Ivory satin, a bodice a little like a man’s waistcoat, a heavy skirt with lace and bows and ruffles that trailed behind her. She’d seen a very old photograph of her mother, taken a few weeks before her own marriage to Edith’s father. When Edith had been younger, she’d hoped she’d look something like her. And now it was startling to find she did.

“You look beautiful.” Edith turned to see Lucille gazing at her in the doorway of her bedroom. There was something almost sad in her eyes.

“Not quite finished yet,” said Edith, gesturing self-consciously at her hair, which tumbled around her shoulders. “Where are the others?”

“Readying themselves in the guest bedroom.” Lucille was already dressed in a deep sapphire gown, the tucks of fabric fitted and highly structured. Aside from the evening they’d met, it was the most color Edith had ever seen her wear. Her hair was coiled and knotted at the back of her head. “May I help you with your hair?”

After a moment’s hesitation, Edith nodded and sat down at her vanity. Lucille came behind her, reached for her hairbrush, and began working it through her hair, drawing out the locks long and golden in the morning sun.

“I envy you.”

“I’m sorry?” Edith frowned at her in the mirror. Lucille put down the brush and picked up several hairpins.

“Not many women like us get a happy ending.”

“It’s not an ending. Merely the beginning of a new chapter.”

Lucille half-smiled as if in wonder at her, curling Edith’s hair into a neat knot. “I envy you,” she repeated. “You can be so… optimistic.” She shook her head. “I could never be that. But then, I suppose I’ve not had much opportunity.”

Edith gazed at her in the mirror. She was so tall, so perfectly put together. There had to be a chink in her armor somewhere, but Edith couldn’t begin to imagine where it would be.

“There are so many things,” she said, “that I do not understand about you.”

“And I about you.”

Lucille gently eased a pin into Edith’s coiffure. Edith shivered as Lucille’s free hand traced very lightly over the side of her bare neck. Edith twisted her head to look up at her and found that she still wore that sad expression. Delicate fingertips traced over the hollow of her throat.

“We cannot keep doing this,” Edith said after a long moment of drinking her in.

“No.”

Lucille took her hand away and forced a smile to her lips, her public smile.

“Sisters, after today?” said Edith, heart still pounding in her chest.

“Sisters.”

Lucille finished her hair quickly, let her hands linger briefly on her shoulders, just long enough for Edith to thank her.

“I should go see how the others are getting on.”

She went to the door, skirt whispering over the floorboards.

“Lucille!”

Edith half-rose from her chair as Lucille turned back, but whatever had made her call out to her vanished from her mind. Some part of her just wanted to take in her face once more, as if it would be their last chance.

“Nothing,” she said at last, surrendering. Lucille looked at her a moment longer and then left. Confused and suddenly ill-at-ease, Edith turned back to her mirror and adjusted the hang of the orange blossoms on her gown.

 _In four hours,_ she thought, _I’ll be a married woman. And then I can determine what to do. Sisters. We’ll be sisters and nothing more. Anything more wouldn’t… it wouldn’t be fair to Thomas._

The thought of Thomas lit a flame of excitement in her belly, which in turn made her self-conscious. Then she dismissed the feeling. This was her wedding day; she was allowed to behave like a bride.

In the mirror, a curtain at the window behind her stirred. Edith looked over her shoulder and frowned. The morning was too cold so they’d left the window closed. Nothing should be moving.  Gooseflesh suddenly erupted on her spine and a prickling appeared on her back, the way she felt when people spoke at a certain angle behind her. Again, she turned sharply, half-expecting to find somewhere waiting there behind her, but there was no one. Just her reflection, wide-eyed and white-faced.

A memory surfaced in her mind, repressed after years and years

Something reached out and touched her cheek.

Edith sat rigid in her chair, knuckles turning white, her pulse racing once again. She was entirely alone, yet she could feel the caress of a hand, of a thumb against her skin. Hot tears pricked at her eyes. This couldn’t be real. The last time anything like this had happened, it had been a nightmare. She’d been young, she’d been grieving, she hadn’t been in her right mind…

A voice in her ear, too familiar, cold breath against the shell and the lobe.

“Beware, my child…”

Edith gritted her teeth, squeezing her eyes shut as she willed herself to be somewhere, _anywhere_ else. The scent of orchids arrived heady in her nose and she could no longer deny the presence at her side.

“ _Mamma…”_

The curtains of the window suddenly shot outward. The sound sent Edith tumbling from the chair, startled, half-blinded from tears. When she looked up again, the curtains were billowing back serenely. The roaring of blood in Edith’s ears eased. Without thinking, she wrapped her arms around herself and began rocking slowly back and forth, back and forth, allowing the rhythm to soothe her.

 _It’s stress_ , she told herself. _Just like last time. It’s alright. It’s nothing. It’s not her. It’s fine. It’s_ fine.

_She never tells me what to beware of anyway._

* * *

If anyone in the bridal party noticed that her hands were still trembling when she descended the staircase, they likely put it down to nerves. Her father caught his breath when she appeared and half-laughed, half-wept when she put her arms around him.

“You look just like your mother,” he said, eyes damp, not noticing her small shiver. “You’ll make your bridegroom cry.”

But having him at her side made the events several minutes before seem less unsettling. By the time she and the rest of the party had been handed into the carriage they’d hired specifically for the wedding, she’d all but forgotten it.

* * *

The ceremony itself was a blur of images: the faces turning towards her at the back of the aisle, taking first her father’s arm and then the first step towards the altar, Thomas’s eyes large and yes, there were tears slipping silently down his face. Her father let go of her arm, smiled as she kissed his cheek, and stepped back.

Handing her bouquet -- orange blossoms and white roses -- to Lucille, who was, to her mild surprise, also weeping, Edith placed her hands in Thomas’s.

And so it was done.

* * *

Now smoke filled Edith’s nose as she, her father, and her new family stood at the train platform, the whistle echoing in their ears. Thomas and Lucille stood off to one side, giving them the privacy they wanted. Her father touched her cheek through the veil of her hat. His eyes were again damp.

“I love you, Edith.” She nodded, the lump in her throat too painful to speak. Instead she let him wrap his arms around her and pull her close. He laughed as she buried her face in his shoulder, the way she would when she was younger and had had a bad dream. “Go on,” he said, smiling now and patting her shoulder. “Don’t keep him waiting. But -- wait.” And he took her hand. “I didn’t like the idea of you marrying him at first,” he said, quickly out of consideration of the train’s departure, “but now that I see how happy you are…” He embraced her again. “Write to me,” he said finally, a little gruffly.

“I love you too, Pappa,” she managed at last. He touched her cheek and then shooed her across the platform to where Thomas and Lucille waited for her.

“Are you ready?” Thomas asked, offering her his arm.

“Yes.”

* * *

She stole a final look at her father through the window of their compartment when the train lurched into motion. He was standing there, hat off, hand raised in farewell. He was lost to her as soon as they passed through the first tunnel.

“I’m sure he’ll be alright,” said Thomas behind her, unbuttoning his coat. She turned to him and smiled.

“I know he will.”

Thomas looked around their compartment, looking bizarrely formal for the tiny space, with his ascot perfectly tied and his waistcoat still done up. That was the one of the stranger things about him: even when working on hot days, his dress remained immaculate, never so much as rolling up his shirtsleeves. He noticed her eyes on him.

“Yes?”

“Nothing.”

“Dinner’s in two hours,” said Thomas. “I think that I,” he continued, opening one of his valises, “will continue reading your book.” He retrieved a copy of _The Atlantic_ , winking at her. “Oh, and I’ve already arranged to have the editions sent to us over our trip. Don’t want you to miss a moment of your glory.’

“Thank you,” said Edith, touched. Thomas sat down and then stretched out on his berth, opening up the newspaper. And that seemed to be all. Edith watched him a moment longer and then retrieved _Dorian Gray_ from her own valise. In all the bustle of wedding preparations, she’d not had time to continue it.

It was a two-berth compartment. Why Thomas had procured one, she didn’t know. Surely now that they were married -- they were married! -- such things wouldn’t matter? She bit her lip and then went to Thomas’s berth anyway. He was her husband, after all. Surely she had a right to at least expect to be close to him sometimes.

“Could you move over a little?” He looked up, startled by the question, and Edith could have sworn that she saw a flash of apprehension in his eyes. But it was gone as soon as it had appeared. He slid to the other side to allow her room enough to lie beside him. She could smell him, a sweet scent close by, mingled perhaps with a hint of macassar oil. There was still space between them -- Edith did not hesitate to close it, pressing their shoulders together. “Can’t I be close to you?” she murmured. Thomas smiled fleetingly and pressed his lips to her forehead.

“Of course you can.”

Edith kissed him on the lips, just once. It was the first time she’d done it since the wedding itself and she found that he still tasted like champagne. After a moment, Thomas pulled away and settled closer to her, head against her head, leg against hers through her skirts. He reopened the newspaper and Edith turned her attention to Dorian Gray and his descent into depravity.

_He could see the reflection of Victor’s face perfectly. It was a placid mask of servility. There was nothing to be afraid of, there. Yet he thought it best to be on his guard. Speaking very slowly…_

After a long period of simply lying by each other, reading, and silence, Thomas closed the paper with a loud rustle and kissed her temple.

“You’re a genius,” he murmured and Edith smiled without taking her eyes off the book. He nestled down on his side and after a few minutes, she heard his breath deepen. Carefully, so as not to wake him, she closed the book and set it down on the floor beside the berth, then turned on her side to study him. There was a furrow in his brow as he slept; Edith wondered what he was dreaming about.

At some point he’d loosened his ascot and several buttons on his shirt, just enough that she could see a faint stripe of skin trailing into the hollow of his throat. There was a bizarre shadow stretching across the lower part of his neck; Edith wondered if it was from the ascot. Leaning close, she closed her eyes and breathed him in, allowing it to stir her just a little. Then she nestled closer, nearly pressing herself against his chest, and let sleep come.

* * *

It was a quarter to seven when Edith woke, her neck a little sore from the awkward angle in which she’d slept. Stifling a yawn, she turned and tentatively shook Thomas’s shoulder. He woke instantly, peering at her for a moment as if confused by her presence. Then his face relaxed.

“What is it?” he asked muzzily and something about his drowsiness made Edith feel as though her heart had exploded. She grinned and pressed her lips to his. He hummed in pleasure but was quick to end it -- Edith wondered if he was deliberately teasing her.

“It’s almost time for dinner,” she said, sitting up. Thomas ran a hand through his hair and then noticed his loose ascot and undone buttons. He hastily redid them and pushed the cloth higher on his throat.

“I'll let you dress in peace,” he murmured and went to his suitcase to retrieve his dinner jacket.

“You don't have to,” said Edith, half rising from the berth. To her annoyance, she felt heat rising in her face. Stupid, stupid self-consciousness... Thomas was flushed too, not meeting her gaze.

“It’s alright,” he said and let himself out, leaving Edith confused and not a little hurt.

* * *

But hurt didn’t last long. Lucille was waiting for them in the dining carriage in a familiar dove-gray dinner dress. She’d wrapped a black shawl embroidered with roses around her shoulders.

“How are you both?” she asked as they slid into their chairs at the table they’d reserved.

“Well. Thank you,” Thomas said. He added abruptly -- “You’re taking the train back home when we arrive in England, aren’t you?” Lucille nodded.

“Don’t worry about me, Thomas,” she said. “I think that Edith would much rather you enjoy your tour with her.” She gave Edith a conspiring smile that was impossible not to return. Edith’s toes curled in her boots. _No no no,_ she couldn’t think of her like this anymore… to cover for herself, she turned to Thomas.

“What’s our first stop in Europe?” she asked.

“France,” he said. “Then Italy and Switzerland.”

“Won’t I have to meet the Queen?” she asked. “Since you’re a part of the aristocracy.” Thomas opened his mouth to reply and then faltered. Lucile cut in smoothly.

“In a few months,” she said. “After you’ve had time to settle into the house.” Edith’s interest sparked.

“The house,” she said eagerly. “Tell me about it.”

“It’s very old,” said Thomas. “Built in the 1600s. Our family has lived there since then. Of course, it’s been refurbished over the years, so it doesn’t seem quite so medieval --” A waiter appeared to take their orders. Once he had gone, Thomas continued. “The house is a great lady, Edith, and in her old age she’s grown rather cantankerous. Has a mind of her own.”

“I can’t wait to see it.” Edith traced a finger around the rim of her wineglass. “The way you describe it, I think I could write there forever.” She laughed. “You and Lucille will have to tell me all your family secrets so I can feed my muse.” Lucille smiled as Thomas looked down at his empty plate.

“If we did,” she said, “it would take us over a decade.”

“Well then,” Edith said, “it’s a good thing I’ve married into the family, isn’t it?”

* * *

By the time their dinner had been cleared away, Edith felt a rather unseemly pull towards her berth -- Thomas was aware of it too. Edith knew from the anticipatory nature of his scent. It all must have been rather embarrassing for Lucille, who no doubt had caught all of it, but she was as natural as ever.

“He has such a florid voice,” said Lucille. “As much I appreciate his doctrines, I find Mr Wilde’s prose rather stifling.”

“Perhaps,” said Edith, stirring her spoon around and around her coffee cup, which had by now gone quite cold. “But I find I enjoy examining different sorts of voices. It makes my own writing more --” She broke off as Thomas studiously tried to suppress a yawn. “I’m sorry, darling, am I boring you?”

“I think we should take this a sign to retire for the night,” said Lucille as Thomas apologized. With murmurs of agreement, they stood, Edith threading her arm with Thomas’s. “Good night, Thomas.” Lucille kissed his cheek and then twisted her head to whisper something in his ear. Then she looked to Edith. “Good night.” Her lips brushed her cheek; their sudden, fleeting closeness made Edith’s heart skip several beats. How could she ever look on Lucille as a sister when such proximity left her breathless? Lucille gathered her shawl around her shoulders, her eyes lingering on Edith for a moment. Then she looked away.

Her compartment was across the corridor from Thomas and Edith’s, and Edith saw from the brief glimpse she was afforded that it was a single berth. Why had Thomas bought them two? Murmured _good night’s_ and _sleep well’s_ and the door to the compartment slid shut. Thomas stood aside to let her enter first, then went in after her, latching the door behind him. It shut with a loud clack in the sudden, ringing silence of the compartment. Thomas stood awkwardly by the berth, one hand pressed to his mouth. It seemed to Edith that she could hear his heart beat, just on the edge of her hearing. Or perhaps that was her own, with her pulse thudding and thudding, blood washing through her veins. The hiss of the train’s pistons seemed quite deafening.

“Hello,” Thomas whispered.

“Hello.”

Tentatively, in the way one might approach a frightened fawn, Edith stepped towards him. His lips parted, he mouthed something that she did not understand, and then -- as Edith stood on tiptoe -- their lips met with a great inhale of the universe.

It was like the day in the park, but without limits and as soon as they came apart, Edith wanted more. She relaxed back onto her heels and pulled his head down to meet hers; Thomas made a soft cry of surprise when her teeth scraped his lower lip and when he stepped backward, she followed so that they were pressed against the side of the berth. His hands found her waist, fingers spreading, sliding down one thigh; Edith ran a hand down his chest and was startled to hear a strange purring sound burst from Thomas’s throat. It seemed to travel directly beneath her skirts and with no more hesitation, she began hastily undoing his ascot. White silk fell to the floor of the compartment, quickly followed by jacket and waistcoat and as his lips found the lobe of her right ear and the expanse of skin behind it, she started on the buttons of his shirt. He was breathing hard now, pulse hammering in her ears. With the added distraction of him undoing the buttons of her frock, it was a shock to her when she saw the great mess of scars stretching around the lower half of his neck. She stepped back in alarm.

“Thomas?”

Yes, rough scratches in a line across, as if the skin had been rubbed or grated away. It looked old. At Edith’s distress, Thomas’s posture sloped inwards again, as if he did not want to be noticed, the frightened look returning to his eyes. He covered the scars on his throat with one long-fingered hand.

“Don’t worry about it,” he begged her, almost babbling. “It’s -- it’s -- it’s -- fine --”

Now that she had stepped back, she could take him in as a whole, and it was even worse. Long, thin scars, as if from a rod, stretched around his torso and his shoulders. And his left forearm… She nearly had to turn away. Countless purple-red pinpricks, tracing the outline of veins, and the clear indentation of a tourniquet just beneath the crook of his arm.

“Edith, please don’t look at it,” he said. “If you don’t want to -- to now, it’s fine. It’s alright.”

“No, no!” she said quickly, taking hold of his hand. “It doesn’t matter to me. You’re still Thomas.” She pressed his knuckles to her lips; Thomas’s eyes filled with tears. “You’re still mine,” she murmured into his skin. Running her mouth over the back of his hand and around to his palm, Edith stepped closer again and pursed her lips against the webbing of veins at the underside of his wrist. Shrugging out of her frock, she pressed forward till he fell back onto the berth, their lips coming together  again as she climbed into his lap. His pulse was the galloping of a horse in Edith’s ears, reaching fever pace when she brushed her hand over his too-lean stomach, hesitated for a moment, and then slipped it beneath the band of his trousers. Her fingers just brushed hardening flesh and then Thomas jerked backwards, paling, eyes wide and suddenly afraid.

“I don’t -- I don’t --” he panted. “I don’t actually like to do this. Not unless I have to.” Edith stared at him for a moment, not immediately understanding him. His scent was like a flood, calling her towards him, to pull him into her arms and devour, but the abject discomfort on his face made her hold back. Swallowing her disappointment, she sat back, giving him the distance he clearly craved. Suddenly she felt guilt gnaw into her belly -- clad in nothing but her underthings, breasts heaving as she tried to regain control of her breath, she felt almost predatory. She couldn’t quite blame Thomas stopping her.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I thought I could get through it. I should have told you earlier. _Much_ earlier. Before --” He didn’t continue. “This can’t have been what you wanted.”

“It’s alright,” said Edith gently. “Come. We’ll -- we’ll get our nightclothes and we’ll sleep. Yes?” After a long moment, he nodded shakily.

“Thank you.”

Edith changed first and then climbed beneath the covers of the berth. Finding _Dorian Gray_ on the floor where she’d left it earlier that day, she pretended to be engrossed in it so her gaze wouldn’t stray towards the pale shape in her periphery. She wondered about his scars, where they had come from and how many more there were. She wondered about _him._

Thomas tentatively slid into the berth after her. The size pressed them close together and this, coupled with the ache between her legs that would not leave her, made it impossible to look at him. She hoped he would not interpret this as anger. She put _Dorian Gray_ back on the floor and, after a moment, Thomas reached over and pulled the chain that turned out the lights in the compartment.

“Thomas?”

“Yes?”

“Why did you get us two berths?”

Silence.

“I didn’t think you’d want to,” he said finally. “Once you saw me.”

“I promise you, it doesn’t matter to me.”

“I’m sorry, Edith. I can’t imagine that this is how you wanted your wedding night to go.” She couldn’t deny the veracity of it. “I’ve just never -- never really enjoyed how it feels.”

“You don’t need to justify yourself,” she said, finally turning to look at him. In the near-darkness, all that she could see of him were his eyes, reflecting the blue light from the window. “Not to me.” Silence. She felt his breath on her forehead.

“Thank you.” For a while, Edith watched the shadows of the scenery fly past their window through the curtain. The ache was easing a little at last. “Would you hold me?”

Thomas’s question took her by surprise and he’d sounded as though he’d been reluctant to ask it. But nothing could keep her from nestling closer, putting her arms around him, and sighing as he placed his head against her shoulder. She felt his heartbeat slow from the gallop of earlier to normalcy and then into sleep.

The sheets were thin and unfamiliar, and with the foreign weight in her arms, it suddenly occurred to Edith that she was very far from home.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shout-out as ever to inanesanity, RedFlagsAndDiamonds, and dinochickennugget for being my sounding boards, beta'ing, and cheerleading.

The sky was just beginning to lighten when Edith woke. Her left arm was numb and so it took her a moment to realize that Thomas was not beside her. Frowning, she sat up and squinted through the semidarkness. The early morning light had turned everything in the compartment a deep shade of blue.

“Thomas?”

“I’m here.”

He was seated on the floor beside one of his suitcases, almost completely hidden by the shadows. Shaking some life back into her arm, she crawled out of the berth and joined him. 

“Are you alright?”

He nodded. “I was hoping that you would wake up after I finished.”

“Would you rather I go back to sleep?”

“No,” Thomas said. “You’re here now.” He took out a syringe and a tourniquet and, with a blasé straightforwardness, wrapped the tourniquet around his arm, pulling it tight with his teeth. He barely hesitated as he brought the needle of the syringe to his flesh.

“You do that every day?” Edith said at last, as he unwrapped the tourniquet from his arm. He nodded, pressing a finger to the pinprick to staunch the bleeding.

“I have to.”

“For your cycles?”

“It keeps me from falling ill, most of the time,” he said. “I have to do it. It makes me more, well, Alpha.”

“But I thought you -- fell ill -- during the --”

“It’s not foolproof. I do what I can.”

“But surely now that I’m here,” said Edith, moving closer, “you don’t need to do that.” Thomas leaned against the compartment wall, suppressing a yawn.

“I’m afraid I do,” he said. “I can’t just stop taking it. The last time I did that I turned feverish. Couldn’t think straight. I only took three-quarters of my usual dose this time. Doing my best to wean myself off of it.” He gave her a tight smile.

“How long have you done this?” Edith joined him against the wall, wrapping her arms around her knees. He leaned against her tentatively and sighed in contentment when she transferred one arm to his shoulders. He smelled disappointingly Alpha, but his body was warm enough... 

“Since I was about… thirteen, I think?” He saw her look of shock. “Pappa didn’t want a -- someone like me -- for a son.” His eyes glazed over as if he were lost in another time. Edith felt torn; she wanted to comfort him and simultaneously write him into a novel. Thomas shook himself. “And once I went to boarding school, it was a requirement.I couldn’t be a distraction to the -- to the other boys.”

“Oh.” A little self-consciously, she found herself imagining what all that must have been like. It was the most obvious he’d been about, well, the usual associations of Omega males. “And Lucille. What of her?”

“Finishing school,” he said. “Switzerland.” There was a strangeness in the way he said it, a quickness of the tone as if he’d memorized the words by rote. “She doesn’t talk about it much.”

“I won’t make you hide,” she said, swallowing her questions for the time being. “I promise you that.”

“It’s my decision,” said Thomas. “I don’t like it when people look at me. I’d much rather be invisible. I simply -- I don’t want to attract attention. You see why this is so hard for me?” Edith did. He’d attract interested glances as an Alpha, and unwanted notice as an Omega. There was no safety for him anywhere. “I don’t think I’ve ever been truly comfortable in my life,” he said. 

“Then,” said Edith at last, delicately, “I hope that I can change that.” Thomas smiled at her.

“You already are.” He kissed her and she let herself get lost in the sensation for a few moments. Thomas tucked his head in against her neck. 

“Thomas?” she asked after they’d been sitting together in silence for a while. 

“Yes?”

“What’s the scar on your neck?”

Thomas stiffened where he rested against her and Edith caught the edge of panic in his scent.

“I --” he began and then stopped. “I don’t think that I can --” He covered his mouth. 

“It’s alright,” she said quickly. “You don’t need to tell me. I don’t have to know if you don’t want me to.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, rubbing at his temples. “I don’t think I can…”

The wall across from them was beginning to lighten with sunlight. She put her arms around him again, let him lean close until he calmed and was soft and warm against her. Any leftover tension from the night before was gone. She was content merely to hold him. 

* * *

They disembarked several hours later at Boston. Edith lifted her veil in spite of herself, taking a great lungful of salt air. The ocean lapped around the docks, a spread of green-gray-blue silk that stretched on into the distance. Gulls shrieked overhead.

“I love the sea,” said Lucille from beside her. The breeze had loosened several wisps of hair from her coiffure; the artlessness of it made her look years younger. Edith was suddenly consumed by a desire to kiss her. Clenching her gloved hands into fists, she held back as Thomas went to purchase their tickets for the boat. 

“Do you?” she managed at last. 

“The air is so clean here. I think I could sink myself into the harbor and come out a better person.”

“You don’t need to do that,” said Edith, touching her hand. Their eyes met and Lucille parted her lips as if about to speak. But she merely said --

“Here’s Thomas.” She moved back a pace as he approached. Edith reluctantly tore her gaze from her and transferred it to her husband with a smile on her face. She was determined to stay true.

* * *

The voyage to England was calm and quiet for all of them. As the boat rocked gently back and forth on the waves, they devoted most of their time to learning each other and their daily rhythms. Lucille looked a little ill for the first few days, but it passed quickly and soon she joined them on the promenade deck and took meals with them.  Thomas grew more comfortable with her and Edith with him, ‘till it no longer seemed strange to climb into bed with him or wake with him, usually with one of his arms thrown haphazardly over her. Their arrangement was unusual and, granted, not entirely satisfying for her, but it was happy. Edith was learning his likes and dislikes. He enjoyed kissing; he disliked having his stomach touched. She’d learned quite inadvertently one morning at breakfast that touching his spine made him shiver and blush.

By contrast,  Lucille seemed heavier than usual. Edith couldn’t shake the feeling that she was a book she would never be able to read, let alone understand.

“Are you alright?” asked Edith one day. She’d seen her through the open door of her cabin, lying on her cot, staring at the ceiling. Lucille shook her head just slightly.

“Low spirits.”

“May I?”

Lucille nodded and Edith tentatively crept inside. The room smelled like the perfume she wore -- roses and a faint hint of lily. Edith sat down beside her and reached out with one hand to smooth back her hair. It was strange to touch her. Lucille lacked the softness and the delicacy that Edith usually preferred; instead, she was angular, firm. She was not her brother and was no Omega. As she stroked her hair silently, Edith tried to puzzle it all out. It made no sense for her to want Lucille in this way. And yet here they were.

Lucille gazed at her, eyes blue and seemingly without-bottom, like a trench in the ocean. Edith saw her throat bob as she swallowed -- then she gasped as Lucille brought her hand to her cheek, caressing her skin lightly. With her loose hair and her dark morning gown, she looked like a nymph of one of the darker, wilder myths. Or a siren, luring sailors to their peril.

“You still look at me like this,” Lucille murmured. “Even after I’ve told you that I can offer you nothing, even after you’ve married my brother. Here you are.”

“You’ve hardly held back,” Edith replied. She reached up to cover Lucille’s cool hand with her own. 

“I cannot,” she murmured. “I know that --” She paused. “I know that Thomas can’t really give you what you want. If you --”

“Lucille, that would be a betrayal.” Her voice was hoarse, uncomfortable in her dry throat.

“Would you at least consider it?” Lucille said. “I know I may not have you, but…” Her eyes. Edith could fall into them. “But if you only knew how I long to hold you. To touch you and taste you and breathe you in at night. It’s not in our natures to --” 

Edith could stand it no longer. She leaned down and pressed her lips to hers. Lucille gasped and then she deepened it, tongue slipping into her mouth, her pulse a dull thud in her ears as Edith’s hands tangled in her hair. It was mad, all of it, but Edith knew in the pounding of her heart and the constant thrum beneath her skirts that this was all utterly right… 

Lucille’s teeth scraped her neck as her hands went to her bodice and Edith reluctantly woke up. She pulled away abruptly, ignoring the screaming of longing from her senses. Lucille looked hungry and debauched, her cheeks flushed, her lips red, her breasts heaving -- no, she couldn’t look. Edith struggled to find something to say, but the words escaped her. Surely there was nothing to be said. Feeling a sob surge in her throat, she covered her mouth and ran from the cabin.

When she hurried into her own cabin, Thomas looked up from his notebook in alarm.

“Darling, what’s the matter?”

She wiped at her cheeks hastily, trying to stop her sobs by holding her breath.

“I’m sorry. It’s nothing,” she managed at last. “I merely -- it’s nothing.”

He didn’t question her further, but came over and held her till she’d calmed completely.

“If there _was_ something wrong, would you tell me?” he said at last. 

“Of course,” she said. The lie tasted bitter in her mouth -- already she knew that she would never confess her feelings about Lucille. She would stay faithful, of course, and that would be enough. She was already learning that Thomas required almost constant affirmation of affection. If she told him that she wanted Lucille as well, he’d take it as a reflection on his own shortcomings.

_It’s better this way,_ she told herself. _Isn’t it?_

To her dismay, she realized that she had no answer.

* * *

Goodbyes at the harbor were strained. Even Thomas noticed the strangely tight atmosphere as Lucille made only a dutiful modicum of eye contact with Edith as they embraced. The kiss on her cheek was dutiful and brief, a far cry from the heated caresses of several days before. Then Lucille turned her attention to Thomas, pulling him close. Edith envied them their freedom, their easy closeness.

But they all had trains to catch -- Lucille to Cumberland, Edith and Thomas to Dover and then into France. Edith decided to take comfort in the fact that she would not see Lucille for some weeks. Perhaps time and distance was what was needed to repair their relationship. 

* * *

_2 December 1895_

_Dear Father,_

_Paris is much rainier than they make it out to be in novels. I think I’ve only seen the sun twice since we arrived. It makes me a little homesick for you and Buffalo. How is everyone back at home? It’s strange not seeing you. Sometimes I mistake gentlemen in the street for you and when I realize my mistake, I start to miss you in earnest._

_But don’t mistake me. I am quite happy. Thomas is very kind to me, almost to a fault, and we are passing very easy days here in the City of Light. I am getting a chance to put to use all the French you made me learn years and years ago! Thomas speaks it very well; one can hardly tell that he is not a native._

_There’s a freedom here in this city that I’ve never quite experienced anywhere else. It’s all rather difficult to put into words here on the page, but suffice to say that they approach things rather differently here… I think if we did not have a house waiting for us in England, this is where I would want to live. Here, I think I could be happy forever._

_All my love,_

_Edith_

_P.S. If you send your reply to the return address, we will have gone by the time it arrives. I’ve left our address in England below. Don’t hesitate to write. I can’t wait to read your letters when I finally arrive!_

* * *

The rain left shining rivulets of light in the black streets. Edith and Thomas hung tightly to each other as they walked, doing their best to avoid puddles -- but as it was, the hem of Edith’s frock was wet through. It was a small nightly adventure for them, this walk through Paris. In the lamplight, everything was sharply defined in shadow and highlight. They were simply two more figures in the gloom.

On impulse, Edith turned on her heels and kissed Thomas, there in the street. Beside them, the overhang of the buildings dripped rain onto the cobblestones. The kiss was more passionate than she’d originally intended and Thomas made a _moue_ of surprise as she wrapped her arms around his neck.

“Edith,” he said once they broke apart, “what if someone sees?”

“I don’t think they care,” said Edith. The few passersby had glanced over curiously, perhaps sniffed the air surreptitiously, and continued on their way. “We’re invisible.”

He let her kiss him again, this time reciprocating with alacrity. The flicker of her tongue against his own made him moan softly; Edith caught herself hoping that perhaps, just once, they would become intimate. But that was selfish and she dismissed the thought readily. _When the time comes_ , she told herself.

Both of them rather weak-kneed, they agreed to return to their hotel.

“ _M’sieur,_ ” said Thomas at the desk of the concierge, “ _deux tasses de thé à la salle 228, s'il vous plaît? Aussi chaudes que possible. ”_

_“Avec plaisir, m’sieur,”_ said the concierge. _“Il y a des lettres pour vous aussi. Juste une momente.”_ He turned to the shelf behind him, searching for their room number. In Edith’s periphery, a slightly older gentleman came to the desk at Thomas’s other side. He smiled to them both, tipping his hat politely. 

“ _Bonsoir, ma petite,”_ he said softly, and it took Edith a moment to realize that he was not addressing her, but Thomas, who blushed a rather lovely pink.

“ _Bonsoir,”_ he murmured back with a shy, almost coy, tone that made Edith’s blood heat. She snaked her arm around his waist. 

“ _Allons-nous au lit, mon chère,”_ she said, in French so the man would understand. “ _Je suis fatiguée.”_

_“Pardonnez-moi,”_ said the man and moved off from them a little bit. But Edith kept her arm around Thomas’s waist, rather enjoying the feelings of protection and possessiveness that had risen in her. Thomas settled against her with a sigh that sounded a little like a purr.

The concierge turned back, several letters in hand.

“ _Voilà.”_ Thomas took the letters with a nod. _“Les thés seront envoyés à votre salle en quelques minutes.”_

_“Merci. Bonsoir.”_

Two minutes later they were in their suite, falling each other the moment the door closed behind them. Edith pressed him back against the door, entwining their fingers as their lips came together.

“Mine,” she whispered between kisses. He pressed his cheek against hers.

“Yours.” His breath was warm against her ear.

They remained that way for several minutes, content to simply breathe each other in. Then there was a knock at the door -- Thomas jumped -- heralding the arrival of their tea. When the concierge had departed, they sat around the hearth in the parlor and let the fire and the drinks calm them. After perhaps a quarter of an hour, Edith spoke. The encounter with the man downstairs had made her think.

“Have you ever... been with a man?”

Thomas half-smiled into his cup.

“Once or twice,” he said. “I did go to boarding school.”

“Did you… What was it like?” She couldn’t think why she wanted to know. Shameless curiosity perhaps. Or, perhaps this way she could understand a little of what it was like to have him. Thomas shrugged.

“It was alright. I seem to remember enjoying it at the time. This was before… er -- my current aversion -- developed.”

“What was his name?”

“Er -- Francis and Henry. Henry’s a bit of a blur. Francis happened because I was feeling rebellious.”

Edith smiled to herself, imagining him as an adolescent, coltish and eager for new experiences. It was difficult to reconcile that boy with the soft-spoken, frightened man he so often was now.

“Is it an aversion to women,” she said at last, “or --”

“No,” he said firmly. “After boarding school, everything just sort of… spiraled out of control. Plummeted, really,” he added.

“What happened?”

Thomas hesitated.

“-- it’s all in the past now,” he said finally. “It hardly matters.”

“You’re always looking to the past,” Edith murmured. “I only wish you would open up to me.” When Thomas did not reply, she sighed. “I’m always ready to listen. When you want to talk, I’ll be there.” She stood and pressed her lips to his forehead. “Will you come to bed?”

“In a little while,” he said. “You go on.”

A brief kiss and then Edith went quietly into the bedroom, changed into her nightdress, and fell asleep on her own.

* * *

_6 December 1895_

_Dear Alan,_

_You would love the architecture here in Venice. It’s the perfect place to write. And although the gondola is hardly my favorite mode of transport -- I keep feeling as though I’m about to pitch backward into the water -- I am spending some very happy days here in the city. I cannot say much for the stench, but nothing is perfect, is it? It’s feeding my imagination a good deal (the city, not the stench). I think I’d like to write a murder mystery here. Something with masks. Perhaps during Carnivale? I don’t know. Tell me what you think!_

_I hope everyone is well back in Buffalo and I hope Eunice is not too angry with me. Please write soon!_

_Edith_

* * *

“There’s a letter for you from Lucille,” said Thomas, placing a crisp envelope on the desk in her suite. Edith looked up after a moment from where she had been staring out the window at the water, hands resting tranquil on the keys of the typewriter that had been Thomas’s wedding gift to her.

“I’m sorry, did you say something?” 

Thomas laughed. “I said there’s a letter for you from Lucille. I’ve got one too.” He held up his own, walking to the parlor. “I’ll let you work in peace.”

She waited until he was out of sight and then picked up the letter with trepidation. It had been over a week and a half since they’d seen each other. The most words they’d exchanged had been that day on the boat when she’d kissed her. She could only imagine what it was Lucille wanted to say to her.

Her letter opener slit the envelope apart neatly and then she drew out the letter itself.

It was fairly short. Edith read it and then went back over it again. Surely this wasn’t right. _It’s quite cold here in England… doing my best to ready the house for your arrival… hope you’re enjoying your tour… I hear France can be a little wet at this time of year…_ How could this be all? After everything that had happened between them, it felt like a slap to the face. 

Perhaps it was a test, to see if Edith would reply and finally broach the subject. She almost wanted to take out paper and start writing immediately. But the prospect was too daunting. She didn’t even know what Lucille expected from her. What would she say? _I want to sleep with you and I wish I hadn’t run away, but I’m married to your brother and that means I stay chaste except for one week each month?_ Perhaps it wasn’t so implausible as she thought. But how could she do it?

It would be better to do it face to face. Find a moment while they settled in and talk to her in a manner that befitted a sister-in-law.

_Think of her as a sister,_ she told herself. It was impossible when the mere mention of her name conjured memories of her lips moving against her own, her hands on her breasts, how she’d wanted her so desperately…

In the end she tucked the letter into the case of her typewriter. If nothing else, she could look at it to take in her handwriting -- almost perfect penmanship. The sort one learned from birth, with one’s spine ramrod straight, one’s left hand tied behind one’s back. Perfection from fear. 

Edith returned to her prospective novel, but the words wouldn’t come. She felt as though Lucille’s letter has sucked her dry of all thought, all inspiration, all novelty. 

* * *

_10 December 1895_

_Dear Agatha,_

_It’s strange to call you by your surname; I think to me you’ll always be Mrs. McMichael. I remember how at our wedding you implored me to write to you, so you see I am fulfilling your demands._

_My husband and I are in Switzerland now and quite snowed in. This doesn’t stop the locals, who are doubtlessly accustomed to such extreme weather. As for Thomas and I, we are content to stay inside and watch the snow fall from the window. Thomas has been a perfect partner and quite generous in fulfilling_ all _my desires. I think_

“What are you doing?” Thomas murmured, rising from the pillows of their hotel bed, laden heavy with thick blankets. He kissed her shoulders through her nightdress and she smiled, putting down her pen and leaning against him. 

“Making Mrs. McMichael livid, I hope,” she said, handing him the letter to read. He laughed out loud. 

“That was rather brazen, don’t you think?” he said, returning it to her. 

“Yes, she hates that about me.”

“And I like it.” Thomas pulled her close, back beneath the covers of their bed. The sheets were soft and deliciously thick. Nestling against him, Edith hummed and laid her head on his shoulder. “You’re not angry, are you?” Thomas added hesitantly. “About not…” He didn’t continue, knowing that she would take his meaning.

“It’s frustrating sometimes,” Edith confessed. Thomas opened his mouth to speak, but she went on. “I want you. But it’s alright. Having you at all is enough.”

“When I fall under the weather again,” Thomas said, “perhaps then. I’m afraid the physic I take has ruined my schedule completely. God only knows when it’ll come again. When it does,” he said, lacing their fingers together, “you can have me.” 

“And you’re sure that you’ll be alright?”

“I’ll find a way.”

She rolled over to face him properly, cradling his cheek.

“Don’t suffer through this on my account,” she said.

“I’ll suffer either way. Believe me, this is easier.”

Thomas went eventually to bathe and Edith reached over the side of the bed for the notebook that was never far from her to take a page from it. 

_10 December, 1895_

_Dear Lucille,_

She stopped. What could be said? The words stared blankly at her from the page, ambiguous and all too bland. Lucille did not want _bland_ from her; that was certain.

_10 December, 1895_

_Dear Lucille,_

_I am sorry I ran from you, but the fact remains that I am your brother’s wife and so cannot betray him by having an affair with you._

She stopped again, read over the sentence, and then tore the paper apart in disgust. 

She couldn’t make herself write the words. No matter how just and correct they were.

* * *

The journey back to England was the longest part of their tour -- by the time they reached Dover, they were both exhausted. But then came the voyage by train north into Cumberland.

“It’s an old area,” Thomas explained as they disembarked at the station. “It’s more or less cut off from everything. Even the railroads don’t run near us. Still, we have a carriage, of sorts. We make do.”

Now, the sound of horse hooves clattered over the cobbled path, the carriage jostling them both with every bump in the earth.

“There,” Thomas said suddenly, pointing up ahead where a pair of wrought-iron gates loomed before them. They hung open, ivy growing over the hinges. And behind them was the house. 

It was vast, sprawling even, the upper floors seeming to almost exceed the limits of the lower foundations as if it grew in size as it grew in height. Several windows were missing, creating the effect of a face with empty sockets where eyes should be. It was the only part of the landscape that did not cling to the ground -- everything else was flat and barren, save for a few scant trees. 

“Welcome home,” said Thomas, handing her out of the carriage. He sounded almost apologetic. “We’ve not worked as hard as we should have to maintain the place, I’m afraid. Yes, go on and take them inside,” he added to the man who’d driven them, an inhabitant of the village several miles away. He nodded and began hauling their trunks inside, a great key ring jangling as he unlocked the door to the house. Thomas held out his hand to Edith. “Lady Edith?” 

“Sir Thomas.” She took his hand with a smile and Thomas swept her into his arms, carrying her over the threshold after the village man, laughing at her shriek of surprise. 

“Alright, I have to put you down now,” he said, voice muffled partially by her frock as he quickly lowered her to the floor. Something gave beneath her shoe and she drew back in disgust. Red clay had seeped out from between the floorboards.

“Sorry about that,” said Thomas. “The house has been sinking for generations. Returning to the land, I suppose.”

“Thomas?” They both looked up to see Lucille descending the staircase before them. Edith did not know where to look: at her or at the house itself. It was grand and it was decaying -- blue, ancient wallpaper covering the walls, the great fireplace directly ahead with a fire blazing, the gap in the rafters of the ceiling, through which dead leaves spiraled dreamily to the floor. As for Lucille, she looked almost like a queen to Edith’s starved eyes. Her poise had improved, with a straighter back and her chin lifted high, her eyes brighter. The frock she wore, deep teal, made it seem as though she had melted from the wall itself. But she was smiling and hurried down the stairs to wrap her arms around Thomas. She caught Edith’s eye over his shoulder and quickly looked away. But then she drew away from her brother and approached her.

“Edith. So wonderful to see you again at last.” Her hand was chilly when Edith shook it, her cheek just as cold when she kissed it. 

“You as well.”

“Edith, would you prefer the tour or tea first?” Thomas asked, taking her coat from her. 

“Tour,” she immediately and, laughing, he took her by the hand to lead to the first room.

* * *

They must have passed through dozens of rooms: a cluttered library with books stacked haphazardly and no catalogue but memory, a dining hall with a cobwebbed chandelier hanging specter-like over the dustcloth-covered furniture, and the kitchen with its fearsome stovepipe oven. Upstairs there were parlors, bedroom after bedroom, all hung with wallpaper and silks that must have once been beautiful, but were now muted by age. Thomas ushered her in for a brief glance at the master bedroom -- green and gold velvet and dust motes in the cold sunlight -- and then it was upstairs into the attic, where Thomas had his workshop. Every table and bench was covered in odds and ends. Thomas noticed Edith’s look of bewilderment at the piles of painted dolls’ heads and porcelain limbs.

“I used to take apart Lucille’s dolls when we were children,” he said. Lucille laughed softly from the doorway. 

“He did,” he said. “I was so angry. Then clocks became his next victims.”

“They still are,” Thomas added. He glanced briefly up at the rafters and Edith followed his gaze, half-expecting to see some strange, reimagined and improved time piece hanging there. But there was nothing except wooden beams. Lucille’s skirts whispered over the floor as she calmly joined them inside and took Thomas’s arm.

“You must convince my brother to repurpose one of the guest bedrooms and move his workshop there,” she told Edith. “This attic is far too drafty.”

“Edith,” said Thomas, with exaggerated patience, “you must tell my sister that there are drafts all over the house no matter where one goes.” Edith’s lips twisted into a smile.

“Yes, well, before you turn me into a messenger between the two of you, you could at least get me a cup of tea,” she said.

* * *

“Some letters came for you while you were away,” said Lucille, putting two envelopes in front of Edith’s place at the table in the kitchen. The first was from her father. She scanned its contents eagerly, smiling at his greeting: _my little Edith._

“Good news, I hope?” Lucille sat down across from her with her own cup of tea.

“Apparently everything in Buffalo is as we left it,” said Edith. “Eunice has met a wealthy railroad investor, so Mrs. McMichael is overjoyed. Oh, and Thomas -- Father says the paperwork has been finalized and the grant for your machine is official.”

“I’ll be sure to write and thank him,” said Thomas, excitement clear in his voice and dancing in his eyes. Edith took a sip of her tea.

“What lovely china,” she said, lifting the tea cup again to admire the black and gold paintwork.

“It’s an heirloom,” said Lucille. “As far as we know, it’s the only set of its kind in the world.”

“Edith, once we’ve finished our tea, we’ll begin unpacking. How does that sound?” asked Thomas. “There’s a spot in the library that would make a perfect place to write, I think…”

* * *

The rest of the day was spent settling in. Edith couldn’t quite shake her feelings of alarm at how cavernous the master bedroom seemed around her. It felt as though the place were trying to swallow her alive, particularly by evening when all the shadows lengthened. Twice she thought she heard a noise behind her, only to find nothing there that could explain the disturbance. The incidents reminded her uncomfortably of the nightmares she had as a child and the moment in her bedroom before her wedding.

Plaiting her hair over one shoulder, she settled back against the pillows of the bed, _Macbeth_ in hand. She’d been overjoyed by the complete collection of Shakespeare’s plays in the Sharpe library. There had been an anthology of the plays in her house in Buffalo that she and her mother would read together. The collection here made the house feel a little more like home.

There was a distant splashing sound -- Thomas filling the bath, most likely. 

Edith turned the page. It was the beginning of Lady Macbeth’s first scene. She’d always admired the character’s strength in spite of her terrible decisions; in fact, she’s realized two years ago that she’d been picturing her as an Alpha for most of her life.

Movement in the open doorway caught her eye. Surely Thomas couldn’t be back already? But again, there was nothing to see. Just the corridor outside, with the rather gloomy ocean scape painting on the wall. A little uneasy, Edith returned to _Macbeth_ and tried to concentrate on the text.

_“The raven himself is hoarse that croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan under my battlements…”_

The floorboards by the bed creaked. _Macbeth_ landed heavy in her lap. There was nothing. Edith realized she was trembling and clenched her teeth.

_There’s nothing to fear here_ , she told herself. _This is my home now. Thomas said it was old, didn’t he? Old houses creak all the time, don’t they?_ But she still brought her knees up to her chest beneath the covers.

Thunk.

She started and then rolled her eyes at her own skittishness. The book had fallen onto the floor. She’d had a long day in an unfamiliar place. She was probably just stressed.

On a split second decision, she leaned over and took her father’s letter from the bedside table, rubbing her eyes before replacing her spectacles to read. She could hear her father’s voice in her head, reading it to her: _my little Edith…_ Gradually, she began to breathe easier and her eyelids grew heavy. After she’d read it twice, she replaced it and settled back against the pillows to sleep.

A sob broke the silence.

Edith jolted upright in bed as the sound came again, this time from the corner by the wardrobe. She caught her breath. Someone was kneeling on the floor there, hands over their face, cast mostly in shadow as they rocked back and forth, back and forth… 

“Lucille?” she asked cautiously. She didn’t know how it could be her, but there was no other explanation. But the figure merely continued to weep. “Is -- are you --”

The figure lifted its head and Edith scrambled backward.

It was like a thing that had once been human, brutalized and left to rot in blood. Its teeth curved in a grimace beneath the void where the rest of its head should have been. Edith could see straight to the back of the inside of the skull. Its gnarled fingers glistened red and black as it reached out to her -- Edith could not tell if it was in supplication or in malice. And it wept, great gasping sobs wrenching from no obvious source. It shook its skull in grief. The scent of blood, cloying and noxious, turned Edith’s stomach and brought tears to her eyes. 

“What do you want?” she managed. 

She blinked. 

The apparition was gone and not even the scent of gore remained to assure her that what she had seen was real.


	5. Chapter 5

The night passed long and essentially without rest for Edith. She feigned sleep when Thomas came to bed and then immediately pressed closer. It was comforting to have warmth and weight there beside her. 

Now, in the morning, she felt more confident. _It must have been a nightmare,_ she told herself as she slipped out of bed and wrapped her dressing gown around herself. _I was tired, I was reading Macbeth. Perfectly logical._

Out on the staircase, she heard piano music rising from below and peered over the banister -- she took her hands off it quickly when it gave slightly under her weight. Lucille sat at the piano near the library, fingers flying over the cap with easy grace. One of the floorboards beneath Edith’s feet creaked and Lucille ceased playing to look up at her.

“You needn’t stay up there,” she called. “You’re not distracting me.”

Obediently, Edith came downstairs and joined her at the piano. For a while, she was content simply to watch her play. She was already dressed, this time in one of her gray gowns, her hair pinned up in its customary fashion. Edith wondered how long she’d been awake. 

“That music,” Edith said tentatively, not wanting to interrupt her playing. “It’s very pretty.”

“It’s a lullaby,” Lucille replied. “I used to sing it to Thomas when we were young.” She played the final chord and then leaned back on the bench, folding her hands demurely in her lap. “How was your night?”

“Well enough,” Edith lied. 

“The wind didn’t wake you?” 

It hadn’t, but only because Edith hadn’t been asleep. She’d frozen there beside Thomas as the air roared throughout the house like God taking a breath. 

“Only for a little while.”

“We’ve had time to grow accustomed to it, Thomas and I,” Lucille said. “In time, you will as well.”

“And you live here all alone?” Edith asked. “I noticed there were servant’s quarters, but…”

“We can’t afford them,” Lucille said baldly. “But yes,” she continued, “we’re alone. Have been for some years. Since our parents died.” Her eyes flicked up past Edith, who turned curiously to find a vast painting above her: an ice-eyed, forbidding woman staring imperiously down at them. The painting was mostly in shadow, which was probably why Edith hadn’t noticed it before. A small plate at the bottom of the frame read _Lady Beatrice Sharpe._

“Is that your grandmother --”

“Mother,” Lucille corrected. “Just mother.”

“She looks so…” Edith couldn’t find an adequate descriptor. 

“Father aged her.” Lucille sounded rather far away. “And he aged us too. So did she, in her turn. It was a relief, almost, when the doctors confined her to the Green Room.”

Edith bit her lip, looking back at her. She was still gazing at the portrait, a little wide-eyed, the way a child might be. She had so many questions, but it was impossible to know where to start. 

“What happened?” she asked finally, unsure if she wanted to hear the answer. Lucille opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came. The moments dragged on. 

“Far too much,” she said at last. Abruptly, she added, “how are you and Thomas?” 

“We’re fine. And you?” 

Lucille didn’t reply immediately, absently fingering one of the higher E flats. The note rang cold and quiet in the sudden silence of the hall. 

“I’ve been thinking,” Lucille said. “About you.”

Edith’s heart fluttered in her chest. So it was to be now. She’d known the conversation would have to come eventually, but she hadn’t expected it to be quite so soon.

“Lucille,” she began, “I can’t do this. You know that.”

“I do,” she said softly. “I overstepped my boundaries that day on the ship. And during those months in Buffalo.”

“We both did,” Edith murmured. She gathered her courage. “Lucille, if we are to live together for the rest of our lives, we must learn to hold back.” 

“Yes.” Lucille wouldn’t look at her, staring instead at the black and white keys that only she was able to understand. 

“You need not remain alone, you know,” Edith continued. “I know that marriage is unlikely, but if there were a woman whom you… I cannot think that Thomas would object.”

She sighed. “There _is_ a woman.” When Lucille finally raised her eyes to her own, Edith felt something break inside of her chest. “Edith, I don’t think that it’s meant to be like this. We’re Alphas.”

“I know.” And yet, she wanted her so completely.

“Honestly, I think we would tire of each other. We both want someone to care for and --” Lucille put a hand to her temples wearily. “It’s better this way.”

“Sisters, then.”

Lucille’s mouth quirked a little sadly.

“Sisters.”

* * *

Edith went for a walk on her own around the house after breakfast, determined to commit the lay of the house to memory. There was the library and Lucille’s collection of music, there the dining room they no longer used, beyond that the now-useless baize door and the kitchen. Upstairs was the bath, master bedroom, Red Room, Blue Room… She peered inside each chamber through the doors, which had been left ajar. Everything was neat and covered in several inches of dust. Then the steps further up to the attic and several other rooms. Lucille’s bedroom was up there, she remembered. Turning back around, another door caught her eye, this one tucked between the Blue Room and the stairs. Unlike the others, the door to this one was closed. She tried the handle out of curiosity but found that it wouldn’t budge.

“We keep that locked.” 

She looked up, startled and slightly guilty, to see Thomas standing there in his overcoat, watching her.

“What for?”

“It’s the Rose Room,” Thomas explained. “Mother’s sick room.”

Edith frowned. “But Lucille told me she was put in the Green Room.” Something flashed in Thomas’s eyes -- alarm perhaps -- but it vanished quickly.

“We moved her,” he said. “She died here.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

He shook his head. “It was a relief.”

Edith shelved her questions for the time being, knowing that Thomas would only push her out if she pried. Instead, she went to him and straightened his ascot.

“Where are you headed to?”

“The machine. Got to get it working sometime.” He paused. “Would you like to see it?” Edith shrugged. 

“Alright.”

“You’ll have to wear some of my clothes,” he said. “Yours are a safety hazard. I really hope…” Machinery and engineering were hardly Edith’s areas of interest, but it was hard to refuse in the face of Thomas’s boundless enthusiasm. She went to the bedroom to dress.

* * *

_17 December 1895_

_Dear Father,_

_Thomas’s machine looks to be in fine shape. I think you would be proud. I know that he has already written to express his gratitude, but I just wanted to give you a thank-you of my own. He’s so happy these days._

_As you will likely get this after Christmas, I’m sending you my gift along with this letter. I bought the cushion in Paris; it’s exactly what you need for your back. You must promise to use it on that horrible chair in your office._

_We’ll pass a quiet Christmas here at Allerdale. I look forward to hearing from you._

_All my love,_

_Edith_

* * *

She had several villagers bring the pine tree into the great hall, placing it near the fireplace. Thomas and Lucille stood off to the side, watching silently. Edith paid the villagers as they left and then turned to them.

“What do you think?” she asked. 

“We’ve never had a tree before,” Lucille said softly. She had her arm around Thomas’s shoulders and laughed, a high-pitched and brittle sound. “I’m afraid you’ll find Christmas here rather dull.”

“I don’t care,” Edith said. “I just wanted us to at least have a tree.”

Thomas pressed his lips to her forehead.

“I love you,” he murmured. Lucille muttered an excuse under her breath and slipped away. They both watched her go. “The adjustments have been hard on her,” Thomas said. “I don’t think she’s used to having quite so many people here before. The last time we had more than the two of us here, we were children.”

“What happened?” Edith murmured. “Thomas, please. I don’t want you to shut me out like this.”

“I don’t think about it anymore,” Thomas insisted. “I close my eyes and it disappears.”

“But you _do_ think of it. Whatever happened, it’s ruling you.” She put her hand on his chest, faltering when he shivered. “Please let me in.”

“If I did,” he said softly, “you wouldn’t love me anymore.”

She kissed him, arms wrapping around his neck, pressing closer when his hands came to her waist.

“Wouldn’t I?”

He sighed, tilting his head down to touch it with hers.

“I should go to her,” he murmured and pulled out of her embrace to follow Lucille further into the house.

Edith felt as though she’d been slapped. Empty, somehow. She’d never force him to talk to her, but she wished that she could make him trust her. Perhaps he feared that she would hurt him too -- he _had_ been hurt. That much she knew. 

She should go write for a while. Perhaps it would take her mind off things. She turned and froze.

It was back. Or -- no. This one had no cavity in its skull. Instead, it floated several inches above the floor, hair rippling like auburn seaweed around its face. It might almost have been beautiful, were it not for the raw, scarlet muscles covering its frame and its fixed grin. Its eyes screamed.

Edith looked frantically behind her to where Thomas and Lucille had gone. When she turned back, the specter had disappeared. The way to the library was unbarred.

* * *

After that, there was no way for her to deny what she had seen all her life. Every footstep in the corridor with no discernible source, every apparition -- she’d seen them since she was twelve and denied what they were.

_It's an old house,_ she told herself before bed each night. _It makes sense that there would be spirits here. They don’t seem to want to harm anyone._

She said nothing to Thomas and Lucille. It was too much to hope that they would believe her.

Still, she was relieved when Thomas joined her in bed. Unease kept her awake most nights and so it was comforting to roll over and study him as he slept: usually on his stomach like a child, his head turned towards her.

But not always. Edith was woken from light sleep late one night by his thrashing. 

“Thomas, Thomas, it’s me, I’m here…” His own convulsions woke him and he immediately came to her arms, laying his head on her chest. “What did you dream?”

No reply, of course. She settled for rubbing his shoulder blades, where the tension lived. He smelled almost entirely Omega these days, now that his dosage had decreased. The scent of him in her nose, raw and sweet, woke up her nerves and even just the sensation of his breath on her skin was enough to make her shiver. He felt it too: rubbing his cheek against her sternum for the sake of the feel of it. 

Edith caught her breath, looking into his eyes. She loved the weight of him on her, just as she loved to wrap her arms around him. It was hard to remember gentility when they kissed, especially with the heat building between her thighs. She stroked his spine though his nightshirt and spread her legs on instinct as he purred. Her hands remained above his waist -- but when her hand brushed his left hip bone, he pulled away immediately.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I just -- I can’t.”

“Please. You don’t need to apologize.”

He fell back onto his own side of the bed, breathing hard. “I just --”

“Here.” Edith spread her hands out. “If you want me to, I’ll hold you for a little while.”

He hesitated and then came tentatively forward once more. 

_It’s all becoming so cyclic,_ she thought after he had fallen asleep against her shoulder. _Want him, nearly have him, lose him. Want him, come so close, lose him. Want Lucille, nearly have her, run at the last minute. And between them all, the ghosts._

She could have sworn she saw a shadow detach itself from the wall and drift across the room. In the distance, someone sobbed.

* * *

Christmas was, indeed, a subdued affair. They exchanged gifts on Christmas Eve over dinner, for once using the dining room instead of the kitchen. Edith had given Thomas a book on Roman architecture and Lucille a book on entomology, both of which she’d found in Venice. Her own gifts -- a book of German fairy tales from Thomas and a butterfly brooch from Lucille -- were placed carefully to the side of her plate. The box in which the brooch had come had proclaimed it to be from a jeweler in Buffalo. Edith didn’t ask. Nor did she inquire after the gifts the siblings exchanged. Lucille placed the cameo necklace beside Thomas’s plate with such trepidation that Edith felt any questions would be a violation of their privacy. The silk ribbons Thomas gave Lucille were much the same. Lucille’s gaze flew from the ribbons to her brother, shock in her eyes.

“I’ve had them for too long,” he murmured.

“I didn’t know you’d taken them,” Lucille stroked one of the ribbons with something approaching wonder. “It’s been so long…” She looked back up at Thomas, dark eyes glimmering in the dim light. Thomas squeezed her hand and suddenly the thought flashed through Edith’s mind: _he’s not entirely mine._ But she dismissed it quickly when he leaned over to kiss her forehead. He _did_ love her. She knew that.

* * *

That night as they readied for bed -- their backs to each other -- Thomas explained.

“When I went to boarding school, I took some of Lucille’s hair ribbons,” he said. “Just a way to remember her by.” 

“Oh.” She hesitated. “And the cameo?” She took a chance and turned to join him at the mirror. He was in his dressing gown, staring down at the necklace. It showed a woman holding a child, kissing its forehead with angelic purity.

Thomas was silent for a while. 

“It’s Mamma’s,” he said finally, speaking quickly. “I stole it from her when I was young. Thought it was pretty. They beat me, so I gave it back. Lucille must have found it for me.”

So here was part of it. A tiny glimpse into his life. Edith put her arms around his shoulders, pressed her cheek against the nape of his neck, near the top of his spine. 

“Did that happen often?” she asked, unsure if she was pushing too hard too soon. But Thomas relaxed against her, replacing the necklace on the dressing table. 

“Often enough.” He turned to her. “And I don’t take anything that isn’t mine anymore. And you?” His tone changed a little, growing lighter. “Did you ever steal things when you were young?”

“I stole a pair of Eunice’s gloves when I was seven,” Edith said. “And I think I still have some of Alan’s ascots. But he gave me at _least_ two of those.” 

Thomas laughed softly and then went silent, leaning against the dressing table. Edith could see their reflections in the mirror behind him. He looked directly at her, and the intensity there made her take notice. 

“Did you,” he began, and Edith felt sure he was about to tell her something important, “ever need to steal food?” 

“Oh god,” Edith said softly and put her arms around him once again.

“He didn’t like children,” Thomas murmured into her shoulder. “We were confined to the attic until I was about seven. We only ever saw the maid. Colette. How I learned French. And then…” He sighed. “And then they let us out and years later I started my cycles and… and Lucille wouldn’t start hers… I ran away the first time. I didn’t want them to be angry with me.”

“Thomas…”

“I remember collapsing and being found and brought back… They put me on the chaise in the great hall. Mamma and Pappa were arguing. It was raining and Lucille was looking at me…”

He pulled back, a little pale.

“Why did you never tell me?” Edith asked. 

“There’s… so much _history_ here,” he said, gesturing at the walls around them. “I didn’t want you to hate it any more than you already would.”

“Do _you_ hate this place?” she asked.

“It’s my home.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

Thomas shook his head.

“Lucille is a little agoraphobic,” he said at last. “She’s afraid of leaving. So am I, if I’m honest.” He paused. “Do _you_ hate this place?”

Edith thought for a moment and then pressed both his hands to her lips. 

“It’s cold. And it’s dark. There’s nowhere to look when you gaze out of a window. I’m used to a city,” she said. “Loud noises from the outside, constant commotion. But if you won’t leave, then I won’t.”

“Let’s go to bed.” Thomas rose and pushed shut the curtains at the windows. “The snow’s late this year,” he added over his shoulder. Clearly, the earlier conversation was over. “We might be able to get another week of work on the machine if we’re lucky. Maybe even sunlight, who knows?”

Edith smiled as she sat down at the foot of the bed. On a burst of inspiration, she patted her thighs. Thomas gave her a look of what may have been incredulity but obeyed -- sitting gingerly in her lap and putting his arms around her neck. It was strangely intimate: Edith felt almost masculine with him pressed above her, the scent of him close in her nose. She was quite aware of his nakedness beneath his nightshirt and dressing gown, just as she was of her own hardening nipples. 

“I’m sorry it’s taking me so long to tell you everything,” Thomas murmured. “I may not ever be able to. It’s just that… when I close my eyes… I always return to my childhood. So does Lucille.”

“I’m here now.” Edith smoothed his hair back. “I’m going to help you. Both of you.”

* * *

A rustling sound woke her early that morning. Edith could just make out Thomas slipping carefully from the room in the darkness.

“Thomas?” she whispered, but he didn’t seem to have heard her. Edith pushed back the heavy covers and crept after him, forgoing her dressing gown.

Moonlight fell from the hole in the ceiling, giving just enough light to see down into the great hall. Lucille, ghostly in her white nightdress, stared up at the pine tree, shoulders shaking. Edith watched as Thomas came behind her and put his arms around her, both of them gazing upwards. Something in their closeness sent a wave of jealousy rushing through her -- but that was ridiculous. There was no reason to be envious of Lucille. 

_Perhaps_ , she thought bitterly, _it’s not her I’m envious of, but Thomas._

* * *

New Year passed quickly, with no snow and the almost-constant call of workers outside. Lucille made her weekly trip to the post office to retrieve their mail and returned in time for breakfast. She swept inside, pulling off her gloves and blowing on her hands after setting down the letters at the center of the table.

“Snow’s coming soon,” she said as she sat down. “You can taste it in the air.”

“We’ve got breakfast for you,” said Thomas, rising to fetch it from the stove. “Still warm.”

“Here, have some tea.” Edith reached for the pot to pour Lucille a cup of it, but she was waved off. 

“I’ll do it myself. You read your letters. You’ve got quite a bundle of them.”

“Really?” Edith put on her glasses and sorted through the envelopes. Sure enough, four of them: Alan, Eunice, Mrs. McMichael, and Mr. Ferguson. “This one’s from my solicitor.” Frowning, she slit Ferguson’s letter open and unfolded it. 

“The workers will be arriving soon,”  Thomas said as she read. “I’d better go.”

“Be safe.”

“I will. Edith, would you -- Edith?”

Tears brimmed heavy and hot on her lashes as she read and read. 

“Edith, you’ve gone so pale.” She was startled to the present by Lucille taking her hand, concern in her eyes. Thomas came to the other side of her.

“Edith, what’s happened?”

She pushed the letter towards Lucille without a word, who took it and read it. She looked up.

“Oh, Edith.”

Lucille hesitated for a moment and then put her arms around her, who buried her head in her shoulder and let the tears fall at last.

“What is it?” Please tell me what’s happened,” Thomas said from behind her.

“... her father’s died,” said Lucille softly, stroking Edith’s hair.

“I should never have left,” she sobbed. “They’ve already had the funeral. It’s all over…”

There was a rustle of paper as Lucille picked up the letter to continue reading. Edith felt Thomas put his hands on her shoulders, his lips touch her head.

“Edith,” said Lucille suddenly, “they’re not giving you the company.”

“What?” Edith lifted her head and wiped at her eyes, taking the letter from her. She read out loud.

“ _Due to the nature of the business, it has been deemed most expedient that a relative in America take ownership of your father’s company and affairs. This responsibility has been designated to a cousin Anthony…_ ” She trailed off, reading the rest to herself. She felt no more energy to speak. The words on the page felt distant and inconsequential. Her father was gone. Wasn’t that the end of everything? No more letters from him, no more being his little Edith. Nothing. But one sentence caught her attention. She stopped, read it again, and looked up. “Thomas, they’re taking away your funding!”

“What?”

_“Your cousin has deemed it necessary to slash expenses due to the delicacy of the company’s current position. Despite my attempts to convince him otherwise, he has canceled the funding for your husband’s project. In consideration of your cousin’s personality and views, I do not think that any pleas on your part will sway him.”_

Thomas had gone quite bloodless; shakily, he sank into the nearest chair and put his head in his hands.

“Oh god,” he muttered. “Oh god.” He looked up, not at Edith, but at Lucille. “What’ll we do?”  
Lucille was motionless behind her.

“I don’t know,” she said carefully. “We’ll find away. We can fix this.”

“No,” said Edith, shaking her head. “No, the money isn’t a problem. I still have an inheritance.” The thought of the money turned her stomach. How could she even think of profiting from this? “I’ll invest it in your machine. It’ll be fine.”

“Edith, can you?” asked Thomas, so urgently that Edith almost felt afraid.

“Yes,” she said. “I can write to Ferguson today. It’ll be alright.” The child in her screamed that nothing would ever be alright again. Who would protect her from her nightmares now? Her eyes filled with tears and a fresh sob tore itself from her throat. Lucille put her arms around her again and Thomas took her hands.

“I’m sorry, darling. What you must think of me,” he murmured. “Oh, Edith…”

“Come, let’s get you back to bed,” said Lucille.

“No, I have to -- that letter --”

“When you’ve rested,” said Lucille firmly. “You’re in no fit state now. Come.” She helped Edith up, she and Thomas supporting her between them as they made their way upstairs. With Lucille’s aid, Edith changed into her nightdress and then Thomas was there to tuck her into bed and stroke her hair until she slept.

* * *

When she woke, the sky was purple and Lucille was there with tea and a bowl of broth. Thomas was gone and the clanking of metal outside told Edith that he was at work.

“You must eat,” she said, gently helping her sit against the pillows. Without asking, she brought the spoon to Edith’s lips. Edith ate obediently. It felt comforting to be looked after in this way. “It grows easier with time,” Lucille added after a few spoonfuls. Edith merely nodded. “I put your other letters on your dressing table.” Edith nodded again. She could now guess what they all were: condolences. 

“Lucille?” she asked at last.

“Yes?” There was tenderness in her voice that brought new tears to Edith’s eyes. 

“Would you bring me some paper and a pen?” Lucille rose, went to the desk by the window, and returned with the items. She remained standing by the bed.

“Should I give you privacy?”

Edith shook her head. “Please stay.” Lucille sat back down and remained silent so Edith could write in peace. The letter was brief and direct: a quick thank-you for giving her the news, and then to business. She addressed her envelope from memory and then dropped it onto her bedside table, covering her eyes.

“Thomas has some machine parts coming next week,” Lucille said eventually. “We can post it then.”

“Thank you.”

“How do you feel?”

Edith considered. “Heavy,” she said finally.

Lucille took her hands. “What can I do for you?”

“Just stay here.” Edith twisted free of her fingers and tucked one dark strand of hair behind Lucille’s ear. Lucille closed her eyes and pressed her cheek against the palm of her hand. “You know,” continued Edith hollowly, “I remember when my mother died. I remember sitting outside her bedroom door and listening to her cough and cry and ask for water. I wished sometimes that she’d just go immediately. Now I don’t know what I would have wished.” She sighed. “If only I’d had the chance to say goodbye…”

“We can _if only_ and _I wish_ our lives away,” Lucille said, tucking the covers more tightly around Edith. “There was nothing you could have done, even if you had been there.” She paused. “Did you have a chance to say goodbye to your mother?”

Edith nodded. “It wasn’t enough, though.”

“It never is,” said Lucille softly. “I have seen far too many people pass in my life. You never get to say everything you want. We must learn to be grateful for the time we were given.”

“But I wish I had more.”

“So do I.”

Edith looked down at their hands and traced a finger over Lucille’s knuckles.

“I wish I understood you.”

The whisper came just on the edge of hearing, Lucille not meeting her gaze. 

“I wish you were mine.”

“A part of me _is_ yours.”

The kiss came not with their lips but with their eyes: tear-filled, astonished, and hungry.

“Sleep with me,” Edith whispered. Lucille gazed at her for a long time. Then she stood and went to the armchair in the corner, dragging it across the floor to the side of the bed.

“In this chair,” she said. “I’ll risk nothing more.”

Edith nodded, knowing that she would have to be content with that. They fell asleep with hands entwined, the slow breaths of the other willing them both to gray, dreamless slumber.

* * *

The deafening slamming against the bedroom door tore Edith from her sleep. Beats of three, pounding in her head as well as on the door. She looked to the chair where Lucille slept on, a furrow in her brow. Beside her, Thomas groaned and rolled over. He must have come in while they were asleep. But how did they not hear the thundering on the wood?

She pushed back the sheets and got to her feet unsteadily, crossed the chilly floorboards, and opened the door.

Two wet, slippery hands immediately came down on her head, holding it level with… Edith could only stare. Black eyes in a scarlet, tortured face -- and a carving knife buried in the forehead.

“Oh god, what are you?”

“ _Haven’t you eyes, child?”_ The words arrived raspy and wet from the thing’s mouth. _“Can’t you see? Monsters.”_ Its nails dug hard into Edith’s head and she shrieked in pain.

“Edith!”

She screamed as another pair of hands closed around her shoulders. Taking a false step, she fell backward into Lucille’s arms.

“What is it?”

“We heard you cry out!” Thomas knelt beside her, eyes wide.

“The -- the thing -- the doorway -- don’t you --” She looked to the door, frantic, and the siblings followed her gaze. But the creature had gone.

* * *

“She touched me,” Edith said later, sitting in the kitchen with a mug of tea in hand. “I could feel her hand on my face. She was as real as you and I are.”

“Edith,” Thomas said, sounding confused, “it couldn’t have been real…”

“She was there!” Edith insisted. “I saw her. I felt her touch me. I had her breath in my face!” She realized she was yelling as Thomas shrank back slightly. She covered her face. “Her eyes… I’ve never seen eyes like that before. Desperate. Cruel. And the knife in her head…”

“ _Knife in her head?”_ The siblings had spoken at once. Edith looked from one to the other. Thomas had gone deathly white.

“Yes,” she said uncertainly. “A knife. In her forehead.” They looked stricken. She thought Lucille might vomit. “What is it? What are you not telling me?”

Lucille closed her eyes and opened them, breathing hard.

“That’s,” she said finally, “how Mother died.”

“Your mother?” Edith repeated. “But I thought that she was sick…”

“I…” Lucille trailed off.

“That’s what we told you,” Thomas said. “We didn’t want you to be frightened.”

“She was murdered?” Edith stared incredulously. “By whom?”

“The police never discovered the killer,” Lucille said. “Neither of us were there at the time. Thomas was at school and I -- was at school as well.”

“How awful,” Edith breathed.

“You said this _thing_ had a knife in her head?”

“Yes. And she’s not the only one.” Edith hesitated. “I’ve seen other apparitions as well.”

“And said nothing?” Thomas asked. He stood and came behind Lucille’s chair, placing his hands on her shoulders.

“I didn’t want to worry you. I didn’t think that you would believe me.” Edith paused. “She tried to tell me something. I think they want me to do… I don’t know.” She swallowed. “I want to find out what it is.” The siblings were silent, staring at her. “If they keep appearing to me, I think that it’s my duty.”

Lucille was the first to find her tongue, voice dry in her throat.

“None of us are beholden to anyone. Surely --”

“But I _am_ ,” Edith said gently. “My mother… she’s visited me over the years. I never discovered what she wanted from me. I failed her. I cannot fail these others.” Thomas looked as though he were about to weep. “I think I must do this.”

A long silence and then Lucille stood shakily.

“Come to bed,” she murmured and led Edith there.

* * *

She did not sleep easily for the rest of the night. It seemed to her that the walls were alive with sounds and footsteps and scarlet fingers reaching for her… She could hear distant murmurs of a conversation downstairs. _What must the others think?_ she wondered. _I must sound completely mad._

About an hour later, the door creaked open and Thomas joined her in bed, legs brushing her own.

“I love you,” he murmured, his voice hoarse as he embraced her beneath the covers. “I love you, I love you, I love you…” He pressed his lips against her shoulder. Edith heard a muffled sob in the darkness. “I love you.”

“Thomas?”

“Just know that.”

They clung to each other through the rest of the night. Lucille did not return. As she fell asleep at last, Edith thought she heard the sound of piano drifting from below -- a lullaby.

* * *

Weak winter light filtered over Edith’s pillow when she opened her eyes. Her lids felt puffy. She’d been crying, she remembered suddenly. Then she noticed the gray figure before her: Lucille with a breakfast-laden tray.

“What time is it?” Edith murmured.

“About ten,” Lucille said. “Thomas is out at work,” she added when Edith slid her hand over to her husband’s empty half of the bed. “I’ve brought you breakfast.” She sat down in the chair she’d dragged over last night and placed the tray on the nightstand. 

“I’m sorry about last night,” Edith said, sitting up.

“Do you still intend to discover what they want?” Lucille asked, teapot in one hand. Edith nodded.

“They seem so desperate…”

Lucile gazed at her for a long time and then leaned over to press her lips against her forehead. Then she poured her a cup of tea, not meeting her eyes.

“You’re too good, Edith,” she said softly. “That’s your trouble.”

Edith took a sip from the tea and recoiled.

“What is it?”

“It’s just very sweet,” she said, covering her mouth delicately with the back of her hand.

“I’m sorry,” Lucille said. “I put in some firethorn berries. They’re very good for you, but they’re very bitter too. You have to add sugar to compensate.”

“Oh.” Edith wrapped her hands around the cup, relishing its warmth. The entire bedroom felt cold. “You’re very good at this,” she added, when Lucille picked up the porridge bowl, waiting for her to put the cup down.

“At what?”

“Nursing people.”

Lucille half-smiled. “I’ve had practice,” she said. “I think that I’ve nursed nearly everyone in my family. Mother, Father once or twice, Thomas… now you.”

“Thomas?”

“He was melancholic for a time.” She traced a finger over the lid of the teapot. “I helped him get better.”

“I can see you rushing about, trying to help everyone,” Edith murmured. She saw Lucille’s eyes glimmer. “Whoever helped you, Lucille?”

Lucille blinked hard, kissed her forehead once more, and stood, leaving the porridge on the tray.

“Eat and then rest,” she said and left quickly. Edith watched her go, troubled and confused. She tried to choke down more of the tea. Outside, the machine’s engine guttered to life but died after several short seconds. The voices of the workers sounded disappointed. 

Eventually, Edith put her cup on the nightstand, ignored the cooling porridge, and bundled the covers around herself to blot out the cold. 

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt quite so lost, or so alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments make me write and I find myself thinking of them at the most inopportune moments of the day!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter-specific warnings are for references to past domestic abuse and past sexual assault.

****“What are you doing?”

Edith looked up at the sound of her husband’s voice and then back down at the spread of books across her desk in the library. The Sharpe genealogy, a history of Cumberland, a handwritten account of the building of Allerdale.

“I want to find out who the others are,” she said.

“You mean the ghosts?” Thomas cleared a space on the desk and sat down as Edith nodded. “Has it occurred to you that you may be taking on a Sisyphean task?”

“I have to at least try,” said Edith.

“You’ve been trying for several days, darling.” His mouth twitched in concern.

“Research takes time,” she said. She covered his hand with her own where it rested on his knee. “Do you miss me?” She’d spent most of the last few days in the library.

“A little, yes,” said Thomas. “Now that the metal’s frozen, I can’t work on the harvester till the thaw. I’m used to always seeing you everywhere.” He glanced down at the cup of tea at Edith’s elbow. There was a thick layer at the bottom where all the sugar had collected. “You had breakfast?”

“Yes, Lucille insisted.”

“How are you?” Thomas touched her cheek. She dropped her gaze to the page, pressing against his palm. “Really.”

“Mending,” she said at last. She had borrowed some of Lucille’s black frocks -- they were large on her, but she had no suitable clothes for mourning. It was strange to have Lucille’s perfume so close all the time, as well as knowing that she’d worn these same dresses, laced them around her body -- she stopped the thought there. “Having the work helps.”

“If there’s anything you need, please let me know.”

“I will.” She gave him a small smile. “I’ve missed you too, you know, while you’ve been out working on that machine of yours.”

The sunlight streamed through the window behind Thomas onto the desk, turning the book pages a brilliant white and illuminating the dust motes floating in the air. The embroidery on his waistcoat glowed.

“I’m sorry, darling,” Thomas said. There was something almost sad in his gaze. “My work has a tendency to swallow me. If you -- mmph--” She had kissed him on impulse; now she stood, chair legs scraping over the floor, to wrap her hands around his waist. His legs curled around the backs of her calves to pull her closer. The want rose in her again, but it was the same as that evening in Paris: playful, incidental, like the way she nipped at the corner of his jaw and laughed when his eyelashes tickled her face.

A rustling sound behind them made Edith pull away and turn. Lucille stood by the bookcase, white-faced. She dropped her gaze.

“Lunch is ready, if you want it.” Her eyes were still fixed on the wooden floor. “I’m sorry.”

She turned and fled, footsteps echoing in quick succession off the shelves. Both of them watched her go, stunned and flushed.

Thomas slid off the desk and started after her.

“Thomas, wait --”

He stopped and looked back at her. Edith bit her lip. How could she convey to him what was in her mind? _It’s not you, it’s me. We’re all such jealous, possessive creatures._

Thomas looked back to where Lucille had gone, then back to Edith, a conflicted look on his face. But he went after Lucille in the end, calling her name.

Edith sank down into the chair at the desk and covered her face. She thought she could hear voices from the other side of the house. What were they discussing? Her? Perhaps Thomas knew everything about their feelings for each other…

She’d begun to write again: a story about a woman who moves into a new house and falls in love with the parlor maid. But she can’t tell if the maid is flesh and blood or a ghost from another time, not even when they lie in each other’s arms.

Edith would never be able to publish it, but that didn’t matter to her. It was a way for her to rationalize her situation.

A new sound, a rustling, flapping sound at her elbow, startled her. She looked over her shoulder. The pages of the building account were turning of their own volition, flipping faster and faster and then finally ceasing near the back on a floor plan of the house.

“Alright,” she said out loud, voice shaking. “What do you want me to --” A single, blood-colored fingerprint appeared on one of the upstairs rooms. “Alright. What’s --” Edith pitched forward suddenly as something shoved her head down to the page, forcing her gaze on the print. “I understand,” she said between her suddenly-chattering teeth. “I understand!”

The pressure lifted and Edith stood upright to take in the map as a whole. The fingerprint had vanished, but she remembered its place on the page. The second level. Frowning, she twisted her head to one side.

The linen closet, of all places.

* * *

Minutes later, she had ascended the staircase and opened the door to the closet. The scent of dust and old lavender sachets greeted her. Her forehead wrinkled in confusion at the piles of bedclothes. What had the ghost wanted her to find?

She frowned, peering further into each shelf. There seemed to be something at the back of the middle shelf… an odd shadow. _I should have brought a candle,_ she thought. Impatiently she pulled the sheets out of the shelf to allow for greater access to the back. There was a smallish hat box tucked in the rear corner as if someone had left it there and forgotten about it. She pulled it out and then knelt on the floor to open it. A leather-bound journal and several gramophone cylinders. There were other odd and ends as well -- an old brooch, several hatpins, a pair of cambric gloves yellowed with age, a nearly-empty bottle of perfume. Edith picked up the book and opened it at random. Every page was filled with painstakingly neat script that seemed somehow familiar.

 _… we_ must _dismiss that chamber maid. Between James and Lucille, she is altogether too much trouble. If it were Thomas and Thomas alone, I could overlook it. But that, unfortunately, is unlikely if not impossible. I_ know _that she’s fucked James. And Lucille gives her looks that I don’t like. I should find a good Alpha. Or only employ men. They’d leave the servants alone then._

Frowning at the coarseness of the language, Edith turned to a later part of the journal. Still the same neat hand.

_He says he’s going away again, for good this time. I don’t know how to feel. I cannot manage these beasts on my own. But at least he will not be here to read over my shoulder. Oh yes, I know you’re doing it. If you don’t like what I write, you shouldn’t read my diary. I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you I’ll kill you I’ll_

Edith shut the book with a snap, feeling suddenly lightheaded. Unsteadily, she reopened it to the inside cover and confirmed her suspicions.

_Property of B.S._

Beatrice Sharpe. She’d found the old Lady Sharpe’s journal.

Thomas and Lucille couldn’t see this. God only knew what it would do to them. In the end, she decided to hide the box at the back of the wardrobe.

After an hour, Thomas came into the bedroom -- tired and looking as though he’d been crying. Edith nonchalantly slid the journal beneath her pillow.

“Is everything alright?” she asked.

“I think we startled her,” he said. He passed his hands over his eyes. “It’s hard, Edith. I’m sorry it’s like this for you.”

“Darling --” she began, but he’d already continued.

“I think we’re all a little tense after all that’s happened.”

“It’s alright,” said Edith. “You don’t need to make excuses.” A thought suddenly occurred to her. “I’m sorry, not to change the subject, but do you have a gramophone player?”

Thomas frowned.

“No… No, I don’t think so. Why do you ask?”

“Just wondered,” said Edith quickly. Mentioning the cylinders would mean bringing up the journal. And she couldn’t do that to him.

“Lunch is still waiting,” Thomas said after a beat of awkward silence.

“I’ll be down later,” she promised. “I’m not very hungry.” She coughed into her sleeve. Thomas furrowed his brow in concern.

“Are you alright?”

“Fine,” she said. “Just a cough I can’t seem to shake.” She smiled. “Probably all the dust from the books I keep unearthing.” He returned her smile weakly.

“Probably.”

“You go down. I’ll be there in a little while.”

Once he had assented and gone down to lunch alone, Edith pulled the journal from beneath the pillow and continued to read. Beatrice Sharpe and her husband appeared to have been equally unstable. At times Edith found herself pitying the woman, who was clearly growing more and more unbalanced by her husband’s erratic behavior. But every entry revealed some new horror committed against the children and that moment of pity would fall away.

_… I am doing my best to teach Lucille the piano. She has passing talent but I had to beat her so she would sit still. She seems to find it impossible not to move her leg…_

_… Thomas is growing more greedy for affection. James has correctly interpreted this as an early sign of illness and confined him to his room until the ordeal is over…_

_… I caught Lucille with the parlor maid early this morning. They were petting each other in an entirely repulsive fashion. The maid was dismissed on the spot and I have since locked Lucille in her bedroom. James will hear about this when he returns. I do wish the hellion would cease her hysterics._

Edith wiped at her cheeks and closed the book. If this was what the ghosts meant for her to find, she wasn’t certain she was up to the task of helping them. She placed the book on the table by the window beneath several others before going to lunch.

* * *

The evening after supper was quiet and subdued, broken only by an occasional cough from Edith. Lucille had not joined them at lunch -- this was the first time they’d seen her since the incident in the library.

Edith took a sip of her too-sweet tea and was immediately wracked by another fit of coughing. Thomas rose to go to her, but she waved him off, handkerchief pressed to her lips.

“No no, it’s --” She coughed again. “It’s fine.”

There were several wet, scarlet spots on the white linen when she pulled it away. Her stomach swooped.

“Edith?” Lucille asked, concern in her voice. Edith forced a smile.

“Nothing.”

* * *

Later that night, Edith sat on the bed and waited for Thomas to come in from his bath. She twisted the stained handkerchief between her fingers, feeling rather faint.

She could still remember the dry, desperate coughs of her dying mother from behind her bedroom door. Was that to be her fate? Coughing up blood wasn’t something that could be ignored; she would have to tell someone…

 _What if I’m going to die?_ she thought. _What will they do?_

She climbed beneath the covers, the stains still on her mind.

She didn’t want to die the way her mother had. She didn’t want to _die._ Tears pricked at her eyes in the semi-darkness, just as the door opened and Thomas slipped in, already in his nightshirt and dressing gown.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, sitting at her side to stroke her hair. She faked a smile.

“I’ll be alright.”

He kissed her and Edith had a sudden flash of paranoia that he would be able to taste the blood in her mouth and would know. _Did my mother know she was going to die? Were there ever moments like this with my father?_ But Thomas didn’t seem to notice anything amiss. He seemed more thoughtful than usual as if he were weighing something in his mind. When he pulled away, his expression was entirely unreadable.

Then, all in a hurry, he slipped off his dressing gown and began fumbling with the buttons of his nightshirt. Edith laid her hands on his in confusion.

“Thomas -- ?!”

“You deserve this,” he murmured. “I’m yours. It’s what you want, isn’t it? I know that it’s been torture. Please, at least let me give you this…”

Edith, stunned where she reclined against the pillows, tried to be rational. But thinking was too difficult with his scent so strong in her nose and Thomas unbuttoning his nightshirt, the linen slipping loosely off one shoulder as his bare thigh pressed against her own. He was warm and damp from the bath, his hair dripping against her face when they kissed again.

A gasp as his hand slipped between her thighs, caressing her through her nightdress. It was such a relief -- at _last_ \-- that she couldn’t hold back from wrapping her arms around him and pulling him onto herself. But he was rigid in her arms, shoulders tight; when she pulled back, she saw that his eyes were squeezed shut. His face was bloodless.

Gently, she took his hand and laid it on the pillow.

“Not like this,” she murmured. Thomas was silent for another moment and then burst into tears. Dismayed, she rolled onto her side and held him through his shaking sobs.

“I love you, I love you…”

“I know you do. You don’t need to prove anything to me…”

“I love you…”

She did up the buttons of his nightshirt, all the while endeavoring not to let her gaze linger on his scars. She knew that upset him.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. She touched his cheek with her hand.

“What do you have to apologize for?”

He gazed at her for a long moment, tears slipping over his temples into his hair. Finally, he shook his head.

“Everything.”

* * *

“Is Thomas not joining us?” Lucille asked at breakfast the next morning. Edith shook her head, putting down her teacup.

“He says he wants to stay in bed for a little while longer.” Lucille bit her lip. “He was rather upset last night,” Edith added.

“I should go to him,” Lucille muttered and rose from her still-full plate to take down the breakfast tray.

“You should at least eat first,” Edith protested, joining her. Lucille waved her off.

“I’m fine --”

“No, you must take care of yourself as well. You eat. _I’ll_ do this.” She laid a hand on Lucille’s forearm. For the first time since yesterday, Lucille looked her in the eye. Silence.

“I… should apologize for my behavior yesterday,” Lucille said at last. “I shouldn’t have reacted the way I did.”

“You don’t need to ap --”

“I just saw you and… I realized how lonely I am.”

Edith wrapped her in an embrace. “You’re not alone,” she whispered into her shoulder. “Thomas and I… we’re here…”

“But I want what you have.” Lucille pulled away, hands on her shoulders. “I’m tired of being… useless.”

“I know how you feel,” Edith murmured. Another silence. Lucille sighed and kissed her cheek.

“I’ll take Thomas his tray,” she said. “You finish your breakfast,” she added. “You look pale these days.”

* * *

She heard them later when she came to the bedroom to retrieve her books.

“I don’t want to do this, Lucy…”

“Shhhh… I know, darling. Neither do I.”

“It’s starting again. All of it.” A muffled sob. “I can feel myself going under. Promise me that you’ll lock me in. _Please_.”

“I’ll do whatever I have to. I won’t let it happen again.” A pause. “You can’t leave me, Thomas.”

“I can’t. I can’t.”

Drawing up her courage, she knocked.

“Come in.” Lucille straightened up from where she’d been bent over the bed, Thomas’s head on her shoulder.

“Excuse me,” Edith murmured uncomfortably as she hurried in. “I just --” She quickly grabbed her books from the table near the window, then passed by the bed. “How are you?”

Thomas smiled weakly. “I’m just about to get up.”

“Alright, darling.” She leaned over to press a kiss to his temple. “Rest if you need to, alright?” He nodded and Edith quickly left the room.

She’d made no remark on the tears that had slipped down Lucille’s face the entire time. She’d not known what to say.

* * *

_My signs are coming again. I can only hope that I am now ugly enough that he will not bother with me. Thomas has been crying a good deal lately; James has been increasing his doses as a result. I’m afraid. There’s always some skirt that James can chase but the man seems to be insatiable. He hurts me. And the things he says… But I have nothing about which to complain. It’s impossible to rape an Omega when she’s ill._

_I will lock the bedroom door just in case._

“Are you very busy?”

Edith looked up and quickly closed the journal. Thomas stood there, fully dressed, his coat draped over his arm.

“What is it?”

“I’m going to get those machine parts from the depot,” he said. “Care to come along? It might do you some good to come out of the house.” Her heart skipped a beat as she realized how long it had been since she’d actually ventured out of doors. Was it when she went to see Thomas’s machine?

“I’d like that,” she said. “I have some letters to post anyway. Let me get my things.”

* * *

A villager had come to drive them. That was strange, Edith realized as Thomas handed her into the carriage. They were more of less at the mercy of the villagers for transport. For everything, really. Thomas glanced up at the gray sky as he took his seat beside her.

“The snow might come today,” he said. He took her hand and gave it a squeeze. “We’ll be as quick as possible. Don’t want to be stranded”

Edith looked over her shoulder as the carriage lurched into motion, the horses’ hooves clopping on the frozen ground. She could have sworn she saw a curtain on the third floor twitch, a figure in teal turning away. It reminded her suddenly of the mad wife in Jane _Eyre_ , locked in by her ashamed husband. Edith and Eunice had read the book together when they were younger.

_“She tried to kill her own brother, Edith!”_

_“But didn’t anybody ever listen to her? How she must have longed to go out… feel the sun on her face…”_

“What are you thinking about?” Thomas asked.

“You and Lucille.”

“.... what do you mean?”

“I’m worried. That’s all.” Edith nestled against him. “Was everything alright this morning?”

“Don’t worry about us,” was all that Thomas said. The conversation lapsed into silence. After a few minutes, Edith took out her notebook and began to write. It was her story about the lady and the maid. Beside her, Thomas drifted to sleep. Edith glanced at him when his breath deepened, worried. He seemed to be sleeping a great deal more than usual. She pulled the blanket they’d brought over their knees and continued to write until her hand ached.

The carriage pulled to a stop at the post office and Thomas opened his eyes.

“We’ve arrived,” Edith told him, helping him stand up.

The inside of the post office was blissfully warm. Edith stripped off her gloves in relief as Thomas shook the hand of a tall man who was waiting with several large crates.

“Erickson,” he said. “That’s the arrival?”

“Just here, Sir Thomas...”

Edith headed further inside to the postmaster’s desk. The man looked up, smiling politely.

“You’re Lady Sharpe, then?”

She smiled a little shyly. It had been so long since she was around people who weren’t her husband or her sister-in-law that she felt entirely out of practice.

“Yes. I have some letters to post? They’re headed for America.”

As the postmaster dealt with her mail and chatted idly, Edith let her gaze wander to where Thomas was kneeling on the ground with several other men, the crates now open. One of the men -- Erickson -- looked slightly confused. For one moment, Edith could have sworn he’d sniffed the air…

“Will that be all today, Lady Sharpe?”

“Yes, thank you,” Edith said vaguely and went immediately to join them. “What’s all this?” she asked, touching his shoulder lightly. He shivered and Edith could suddenly understand why Erickson had been bewildered: Thomas’s scent was coming stronger than usual.

“... This won’t be quite as susceptible to the elements,” Thomas was saying. “We should be able to work all year ‘round now.”

“How wonderful,” she said. Thomas stiffened as she lay her hands on his shoulders experimentally. Still speaking, he pressed casually against her, his head near her stomach. Beneath her skirts, her flesh pulsed. “And this, this’ll help control speed.”

“I see --” She stopped short. Thomas’s body, pressed flush against her own, had suddenly flared with heat. He turned to look up at her, fear ringing in his eyes.

“Are you alright, darling?” His voice was not steady.

_Of course. My turn to playact._

“I think…” she said, raising a hand to her temple, “I think I need to go home.” Thomas got to his feet rather shakily and put an arm around her.

The postmaster glanced out the window.

“It’s begun to snow, Sir Thomas. I don’t know that you could make it back before it gets too thick.” He hesitated. “We _do_ have a room for travelers, if you need…”

Edith turned to Thomas.

“What do you want?” she said in an undertone. He swallowed.

“It’ll be a week or so,” he said. “We can’t intrude on them for that long. And Lucy...”

“We try for home then?” she asked, noticing how he’d slipped into using the pet name.

“Yes.”

* * *

The journey back felt almost impossible. Snow fell over them as time crawled on. The driver kept the horses at a careful pace in case they slipped. And Thomas… when Mrs McMichael had explained the cycle to her, she had not mentioned the Omega’s disorientation. He gripped her hand, his breath erratic and more like sobs from deep within his lungs. Edith stroked his hand the way she had back in Buffalo, but it was becoming rapidly clear that the sensation was not enough to soothe him. Eventually he laid his head in her lap, clinging to her hands miserably.

His breath was warm on her belly. Shifting, she pressed her legs together beneath the weight of his head, trying to temper the pangs between them. And in spite of her concern for him, there were flutters in her stomach that she recognized as excitement. _At last, at last…_ Did that make her cruel? Edith couldn’t, at that moment, make herself care.

Thomas tilted his chin downwards, pressing his lips to the space between her pelvis and her thigh. Wetness slipped into her underclothes and she stroked her hand down his chest to, with a confirming glance back at his face, cup the growing bulge in his trousers. His hips bucked forward immediately as his scent wafted up again, heady as wine in her nose. There was no way that their driver could be oblivious of the situation. But Edith merely bent down and pressed her lips against Thomas’s open mouth. It was an explosion of sensation and taste -- Thomas sat up to allow for greater access. She couldn’t hold him tightly enough. Every sight of him as he kissed her throat, her shoulders, the line of her jaw, was another pang of desire.

Behind his head the house loomed into view. The carriage was slowing now. Edith placed both hands on his shoulders and gently pushed him away from her, hushing his whimper of protest. When they came to a halt at the front entrance, it was Edith who stepped down first and helped Thomas down after her. Then there was the matter of the driver. Edith reached into her reticule and gave him as much money as she could hold with her shaking fingers, giving him a meaningful look. He nodded his understanding as Edith helped Thomas inside.

He lost his balance several steps after the door closed behind them -- his legs buckled and he landed hard on his knees.

“Thomas --!” She bent down, trying to pull him up, but he’d gone rigid. Tears gathered like dew in his lashes. “Thomas, please!” She looked around frantically. Thomas was beginning to moan, not in pleasure but in terror. “Lucille! Lucille!” Her shriek echoed off the walls.

Lucille was a streak of blue-green that flew down the staircase desperately to where they were stranded.

“Thomas,” she said urgently, kneeling beside him. “Thomas, it’s me.” She touched his face and immediately flinched, as if burned. But Thomas’s eyes flew open, large and dark. Their hands twisted together.

“Lucy…”

Lucille bit her lip and then hoisted him to his feet. Edith took his other arm and wrapped it around her shoulder.

“Upstairs,” said Lucille. Edith nodded, glad that someone else could think clearly -- Thomas’s scent was too distracting and the sensation of his sleeve against the nape of her neck nearly made her heart stop. Thomas buried his head in Lucille’s shoulder, his breath uneven as they climbed the stairs. “We’ll need to do this part quickly,” said Lucille, nodding to the second-floor corridor. “Go.” Thomas nearly tripped over his own feet as they rushed him into the master bedroom.

Edith brought Thomas to the bed, where he collapsed bonelessly, and immediately ripped the pins from her hat, discarding both on the floor. Thomas’s coat joined them. With trembling fingers, he pulled at his ascot and started unsuccessfully on the buttons of his waistcoat. Edith hurried through the buttons of her frock and then turned to help him -- but Lucille was already there, helping him off with his waistcoat and starting on his shirt.

“Lucille, you don’t need --”

Thomas cupped Lucille’s cheek with one violently trembling hand and kissed her.

Lucille began tearing at the fastenings of her own clothes, then at the buttons of her brother’s trousers, her mouth still on his. Thomas’s mouth trailed over her throat, her earlobes, the crook of her elbow as she slid into his lap, straddling his thigh and bringing her hand between his legs.

Half-dressed with her corset partially unclasped, Edith took a large step back against the wall, unwilling to believe the evidence of her own eyes. It couldn’t be real… Perhaps he didn’t realize. But as she watched, wide-eyed, Thomas began murmuring her name between every kiss to her bare shoulder, where the sleeve of her chemise had slipped loose: _Lucy, Lucy, Lucy…_

Edith sank blindly into the armchair nearby. This couldn’t be real. She was his _sister_. How could they bear it?

_“Lucy… Lucy…”_

A sob broke through her throat as Edith unclasped the rest of her corset and tossed it on the floor in defeat. Neither of them had even looked at her. She’d never felt so insignificant, not even when Mrs McMichael had snubbed her in public, not even when Eunice had told her stop hanging about her so much. She didn’t matter. And why wasn’t she furious? She’d heard that Alphas were supposed to be fiercely protective of their Omegas, to the point that seeing them in the arms of another caused unthinkable pain, rage. If that was true, why did she feel only grief?

 _Of course,_ she thought dully, still watching them. A loud moan rose from the bed. _We never consummated it. There’s no bond._

After that, there was nothing left to do but curl into a ball, hide her head in her knees, and sob.

Silence from the bed, save for some slow pants, after what seemed to be an interminable amount of sighs and groans. Daring to look up, she saw that Lucille’s chemise had fallen around her elbows and that Thomas had buried his face between her scarred breasts, eyes closed. Lucille looked up at Edith, her expression issuing at once a plea for mercy and a challenge. Thomas looked at her too, his face flushed, a tear streaking down his cheek.

“How long?” Edith’s voice cracked. “How long have you -- how _could_ you.”

Thomas fell back onto the bed and covered his face with his hands, whether out of grief or shame Edith couldn’t tell. Lucille stood and turned away from her.

“Edith,” she murmured. Her voice was huskier than usual. At any other time, Edith might have found it entrancing. Part of her still did.

“He’s my _husband._ I have a --” She was going to say _right_ , but changed her mind. “He’s mine…”

“We bonded years ago. Really, he’s mine.” Lucille put a hand on Thomas’s bare knee, squeezing comfortingly. Edith heard a contented sigh from the bed.

“How long? How long have you been --” She couldn’t make herself say _lovers._ Not to them.

“Long enough.” Thomas groaned and Lucille sat beside him, stroking his hair. “Shh, I’m here. It’s alright.”

“Do you even love me?” Edith asked, voice cracking. Thomas’s hands curled into fists.

“Edith, I swear I do --” His voice cracked.

“You told me you loved me!”

“I do!”

Without thought, she rose from the armchair, climbed onto the bed, and pressed her lips to his own. Some need to erase Lucille from his body drove her on: tongue slipping into his mouth, hands roaming over his chest. They came apart and Thomas made a _moue_ of protest.

“More, please.”

She kissed him again.

“Edith,” said Lucille from the side. Edith didn’t look at her. As they caressed each other, Thomas was more and more the center of her world. He shifted beneath her, angling himself more open, offering himself up to her. Lucille spoke again. “Edith, please don’t do this to me.”

Instead she traced her hands over his sides, around the swell of his buttocks and the backs of his thighs. Over his pelvis and the rough scar tissue there. Thomas lay back against the bed, staring up at her with a combination of desire and fear in his eyes that was somehow loveliest thing Edith had ever seen. Her hand closed around his hardening length and simultaneously, she felt moisture slipping down the inside of her thigh. Thomas pushed her chemise up around her waist, lips on her collarbone. Edith was dimly aware of Lucille rising from the bed, no doubt turning away, but then she’d nudged him between her thighs and he was gazing at her, so pleading…

“Yes?” she breathed. “Yes?”

“Yes.”

Edith hesitated -- with all the books she’d read and the scant advice Mrs McMichael had given her, she was still afraid of this -- and then eased herself down. Thomas exhaled sharply and then his hips canted forward, nearly dislodging Edith in the process. On instinct, she seized him by his hair and rolled her hips back and forth; her husband, almost hyperventilating, dropped his hands to her thighs and closed his eyes, letting her find their rhythm. He needed her so badly. Edith seized the nearest bed post for support as they rocked back and forth, sweat rolling down their skin in rivulets.

Sharp pain erupted in her left shoulder as weight settled behind her. Beneath the overpowering scent of Thomas’s arousal, she caught a note of roses and lily: Lucille. Edith felt her breasts pressed against her shoulder blades. And that pain… that was her teeth, buried in her flesh.

 _Pain and rage,_ she thought.

Thomas threw his head back and groaned as heat burst within her.

“Please… stop…” he managed.

Edith clumsily disentangled herself from him and fell back against Lucille. Pressure still beat in her core. Wasn’t she supposed to --

“Ah --”

With no preamble, Lucille reached beneath Edith’s chemise and stroked her fingertips over her folds, her other hand on her breast. The pace of her hand was quick and merciless; Edith made a choked sound in her throat as pleasure surged within her.  She settled onto the bed beside Thomas as Lucille went to his other side. For a while, they all simply lay there and tried to get their breath back.

Her hair was coming undone. Edith reached up and unpinned it. She saw in her periphery Lucille watching her.

“Here.” She reached over Thomas and drew out the pins from Lucille’s own hair. Her hands lingered over her  neck. Lucille sat passively -- it seemed that she was accepting Edith’s presence. Much in the same way that Edith had accepted Lucille’s. Her gaze went to the door. The thought of shoving Lucille out and forcing her to endure the next week alone was suddenly impossible. How could she do that to her when she’d professed to care for her? And as far as Lucille and Thomas were concerned… If that was what they needed, then so be it. Thomas was too vulnerable for her to deny him what he needed, or blame him when he was so clearly out of possession of his faculties.

“Lucille,” he murmured, curling into her arms like a cat, his length once again hardening against her thigh. Their kiss was long and deep and Edith felt a thrill of pleasure within her as she watched that she hadn’t anticipated.

 _It doesn’t matter,_ she realized suddenly as Lucille stroked a hand over his hip. _What we do here in this room, the things that we feel…  No one need know but us. Unmask and descend._

Edith kissed Thomas’s neck from his other side and closed her eyes as he rocked and rocked between them both.

* * *

They collapsed late that night out of sheer exhaustion, a sweating heap of bodies. Edith was dimly aware of Lucille’s eyes on her as she drifted to sleep.

But they were both woken later by Thomas’s thrashing and his moans of terror. Lucille shook his shoulder frantically until he awoke.

“-- Pappa!”

“Shhhh…” Lucille crawled on top of him to hold him down as he shuddered and twitched. “He can’t harm you. Do you hear me?” Thomas froze. His eyes were wide and terrified as he nodded jerkily. “Neither of them can harm you anymore. I promised you, didn’t I?”

He nodded mutely, lips parted. Edith, unsure of how to respond, pressed closer and kissed the back of his head, hoping that the contact would soothe him. To her relief, he hummed and breathed out, then turned to kiss her on the mouth. His skin was growing warm again, his scent heavy and sweet with arousal. Lucille quickly climbed off of him, but kissed the nape of his neck. Thomas turned back to her and Edith brought her lips to his spine, her fingers tracing over his tailbone and then slipping into the cleft of his buttocks. He’d slickened heavily, making it the work of a moment or two to slip her fingers in. She smiled against his shoulder blade at, first, his gasp of surprise, and then his gasp of pleasure…

“There,” he breathed. “Ah -- ah -- “

Edith curled her fingers over and over as Thomas buried his head in Lucille’s neck and groaned.

* * *

Edith’s memories of the second day were a confused jumble of images, tastes, sensations: kissing Thomas, someone’s tongue running over her nipple, fingers twisting within her… Thomas had burst into tears earlier, but he smiled almost euphorically as she slid around him once again; she felt him shudder within her -- _more, more_ \-- watching Lucille cradle his head and stroke his hair, murmuring to him… Edith eventually pulled off her chemise completely and flushed even redder when she caught Lucille’s gaze running over her. But Lucille wouldn’t touch her, similar to the way she wouldn’t let Thomas inside herself, and the way she refused to disrobe entirely.

Even they, it seemed, had their limits.

* * *

The third day was best, Edith would remember later. The time they’d had together had given them an idea of their limits and their proclivities. Better yet, Thomas was more lucid and although he still was mostly nonverbal -- he’d given up on words entirely halfway through the previous day -- it was easier for him to reciprocate. Her final memory of the mad dance that was Thomas’s cycle was of mounting him once again, fingers tangled in his hair as, behind him, Lucille stroked his nipples with one hand, the other between her own legs. The back of Lucille’s hand brushed against the waning curve of Edith’s breast; but when Edith leaned forward to kiss her, Lucille was quick to bring her lips to the top of Thomas’s spine instead. Thomas claimed the kiss for himself, so hungry and desperate and sweet-tasting that Edith thought she might die.

* * *

Edith opened her eyes lazily to find herself lying horizontally at the foot of their bed. There was a foot pressed against her stomach and eventually she recognized it as her husband’s. Thomas lay weak and pale against the pillows, motionless, his eyes closed. For a moment, a terrible fear rose in her that she and Lucille had somehow managed to kill him. She rose to her elbows and leaned over to press her hand against his wrist and search for a pulse.

“It’s alright.” Edith looked up to see Lucille in the doorway, still clad in her chemise, a tray with several glasses and a pitcher in her hands. She set it down by the bed and poured Edith a glass of water. “He’ll sleep for a while. I should warn you, he’ll be rather emotional when he wakes. But then things will go back to normal. Drink that, you need it.”

Without thinking, Edith raised the glass to her lips. The moment the water touched her tongue, she realized how badly she’d been craving it. She finished the glass within seconds, then placed it back on the tray. She dragged a hand through her tangled hair and yawned.

“I’m sorry,” added Lucille, nodding towards her shoulder. Edith twisted her head to notice with dull surprise that she had an angry, raw set of tooth marks buried in her flesh. She smiled tightly, shaking her head.

“It’s alright.”

“He may not want to be touched for the next week or so,” Lucille said. “His illnesses are so exhausting for him… He needs time to collect himself.”

“I understand.”

“What I mean is that you mustn’t think that you’ve _cured_ him or anything,” Lucille pressed on. “No matter how often he says that he wants it, it’s not -- he doesn’t -- it doesn’t feel right for him.”

“I know,” Edith said gently. “You don’t need to worry. I understand.”

A draft blew through the open door and Edith shivered, then blushed as she suddenly realized that she was naked. Somehow it hadn’t hit her before. A little self-conscious, she stood and limped to the wardrobe to retrieve one of Thomas’s dressing gowns. The indigo velvet smelled a little like him, which gave her a rather pleasant sense of ownership.

“You’re so kind to him,” Lucille murmured as Edith sat back down on Thomas’s other side. “People aren’t, usually.”

Silence fell. Edith nestled closer to Thomas, who murmured something unintelligible and then laced his fingers with hers. After a moment, Lucille stirred and gathered him against herself, bringing a glass of water to his lips. He didn’t wake, but drank in his sleep. Edith watched in an odd mixture of tenderness and curiosity as Lucille murmured to him and caught the drops that spilled over his chin.

“Tell me,” she said at last. “Tell me how this began.”

Lucille sighed and leaned back against the headboard, Thomas’s head against her chest.

“He was fourteen,” she said softly, stroking his hair. “He fell ill one night and I was… I was frantic. We both were. I don’t remember which of us began it. It was probably me,” she added morosely.

“Lucille --”

“No, it _must_ have been,” she insisted, then shook herself. “Pappa was away the time -- thank god -- but there was still Mamma to worry about. We knew she’d know as soon as we came near. The scent’s so strong.” She lay her cheek against the top of Thomas’s head. “We were terrified that morning. For all we knew, she’d kill us. I remember crying, Thomas clinging to me. He said _we didn’t mean to, did we, Lucy._ And I suppose we didn’t. At least for the first time.”

“What did your mother do?” Edith whispered.

“Separated us and sent us away. Couldn’t bear the sight of us. Thomas was sent to school and I --” She stopped short. Edith wet her lips and then cautiously voiced her suspicions.

“It wasn’t a finishing school that they sent you to, was it?”

“No.” Her voice was hoarse. The track mark of a tear glimmered down her cheek. “I -- I remember so little of my time there. They gave me so much laudanum I could barely think straight. I was afraid, confused all the time. There was a man… I was afraid of him… He said he could fix me and make me an Omega, but I’d always faint when he came. And when I woke up, there was all this blood and I ached and my throat hurt… I didn’t understand what happened until I was released. ‘Till I had some distance.” She raised her head and wiped roughly at her eyes. “He said he could make me learn to enjoy it.”

“Oh god.” Edith couldn’t remember how to breathe. She stared in silent horror at Lucille, who gazed up at the canopy, tears rolling down her cheeks.

“It’s all my fault,” she murmured.

“You can’t blame yourself for everything that’s happened,” Edith said gently. “Surely --”

“If I hadn’t gone to his bedroom that night, then he might be alright today!” Lucille snapped. Thomas groaned in his sleep and immediately she turned her attention to him, her tone softening. “Shhh… I’m sorry, my darling…”

“You can’t blame yourself for everything,” Edith repeated. But it was all beginning to come together for her. “This protectiveness, the way you constantly care for him… You think that you’ve wronged him. You’re trying to earn forgiveness.”

“Because I must,” she said harshly. “And because I have a debt to repay.”

“What debt?”

“Thomas was the one who freed me from the asylum,” Lucille said. “The entirety of his last year at school, he fought to have me released. Had it not been for him, I wouldn’t have lasted much longer. I’d stopped eating. I just lay in my cell and waited to die.” She swallowed hard. “He gave me back my life. And I, in my turn, destroyed his.”

“How could you have destroyed his life singlehandedly?”

Lucille slumped back against the pillows and took a breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments make me sing!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter include some drug use, a lot of blood, references to past sexual assault, attempted suicide, and some gender-specific insults towards the end.
> 
> Edith and Lucille are reading The Portrait Of A Lady By Henry James.
> 
> If you're a music geek like me, I recommend you listen to Ennio Morricone's "Lolita," James Newton Howard's "The Vote," and James Horner's "For The Love Of A Princess" for this chapter.

1892

The world is without color, without sound, without sensation. Lucille has been home for three months. She lets the silence heal her. Solitude, it seems, is what she most needs after being released from her prison. But that solitude will not last much longer.

Thomas is coming home.

She reads it in his letter to her and chokes back tears. How many years had it been? Seven, at least? The thought leaves her weak. Seven years spent without him, without someone to touch her with kindness or smile at her. Seven years spent with her heart ripped out of her chest. 

Now she hears wheels rattle outside and runs downstairs to meet the knocking at the door. 

She hardly recognizes the tall, lanky man standing there waiting for her -- but she meets Thomas’s gaze and all the color floods back into the world. He’s grown up. No more boyishness. Standing before him, Lucille feels suddenly inadequate. She is too gaunt and too nervous to be loved. But his teary-eyed look of disbelief and adoration reassures her. 

The carriage pulls off into the distance and Lucille opens her mouth to speak: _I’ll make tea._ But all that comes out is his name, cracked with years of silence broken only by screaming.

“Thomas.”

“Lucy.” 

His voice is deeper than she remembers. So much has changed… 

They never reach the kitchen. Instead, they seize each other and kiss hard in the drawing room. Before she realizes what she’s done, she bent him backward over the arm of the nearest chaise. Thomas laughs in surprise and pulls her eagerly onto himself. They must reclaim each other again. The knowledge is burned deep within them, a biological need. But still, she pushes away his hands when he tries to untie her chemise, chokes back tears when he slips inside of her. Some things cannot be mended. 

Afterward, they lie in each other’s arms, playing with each other’s hair and relishing each other’s nearness. She kisses his bare shoulder, his weight heavy in her arms. 

“You’re different,” she murmurs. Her voice is still broken.

“So are you.” He turns in her arms, kisses her. Distance has made all of this easier. The debilitating guilt at what they did has faded to a dull ache, buried beneath years of far more painful things. Thomas is more her mate than he is her brother. “You’ve grown up.”

“And so have you.” She presses her face close to his, inhales. “You smell different, somehow.”

Something flickers in his eyes and Thomas lowers his gaze, scraping his teeth over his lower lip.

“Something’s happened, Lucille,” he says softly. “You… You have to promise not to be angry.”

“I promise.” She stares warily at him, anxiety rising within her as her mind races through all the possibilities of what might have befallen him. He leans in.

“I’m pregnant.” He smiles tentatively but falters in the face of Lucille’s look of horror.

“Oh god.” Her breath catches in her throat, but still, the words rush out. “Oh god, what did they do to you? Who was it?” she continued. “Why didn’t you tell me, I wouldn’t have --”

“No, Lucy.” He sits up and puts his hands on her shoulders. “It’s not like that. You don’t have to worry. I was ill. He was kind to me.” He stumbles over his words, growing bright red. “And -- and I let him. He was gentle. And -- we -- we had to lock and barricade the dormitory door -- they kept demanding that we come out --” He sees the look on her face. “Lucy…”

“Didn’t you think of me?” she whispers. “Ever?”

“You weren’t there,” he says gently. “I needed someone.”

“Did you bond?”

Thomas nods after a moment. 

“It didn’t matter,” he says uncomfortably. “Henry was pulled out of school immediately after.”

“And you have a child?” continues Lucille, trying to get her red, angry feelings under control. “Or, you will have one?” Thomas nods again. Lucille hesitates. “You know you’ll have to carry it to term,” she says cautiously. “There’s nowhere we can go that can --”

“Lucy, I think I want it.” He takes her hand and presses the back of it to his lips. “I want to raise it with you. We can have the child we would never have gotten otherwise. Think of it -- we could have a family of our own. We could make everything right.” 

Lucille runs her other hand over his stomach and pauses there. There is nothing to feel yet but warmth from his skin. 

“We’ll have to be careful,” she whispers. “How long?”

“I’ve only known for over a month or so. We’ve a while yet.” He kisses her, smiling. “I’ve missed you…” He deepens the kiss as his hands slip beneath her chemise, his fingers making to slip within her -- she pushes his hand away. 

“No,” she says, breath quickening. She sees the startled expression on her brother’s face and sighs. “I can’t have you like this anymore. Inside, I mean. It’s too much.” 

He gazes at her, cradling her cheek with his hand, and she knows that he is wondering about her past. Pitying her. Likely berating himself that he couldn’t have freed her sooner. 

He nods and presses his lips to her forehead.

“It’s alright.”

“You’re the only person I could ever love. But not even you.” 

“Lucille, you don’t need to defend yourself. You know that you’re not to blame.”

She shakes her head.

“You know that’s not true. If I hadn’t --”

“Hush.” He places a finger gently to her lips. “We won’t talk of it.” 

“But I wouldn’t be like this and you wouldn’t be…” She glances down at his belly. 

“Lucille.” He brings her gaze back up. “I _want_ this baby. It’s not a curse.” She smiles tightly and pulls him close against herself. He smells different: not quite as youthful. And there’s a slightly sharper edge to it that Lucille suspects is the scent of his pregnancy. “I want everything to go right from now on,” Thomas murmurs against her shoulder. “We’ll do everything we should. We’ll be better than what we’ve come from, won’t we?”

“Yes, of course,” Lucille says. With Thomas beside her at last, she almost feels as though they can succeed. 

 

Their days are a cycle of bliss. At last, for the first time in Lucille’s memory, there is no one to scream at them, or beat them, or threaten them. There is no need to be afraid anymore. They wake in each other’s arms and spend their days talking, catching up on the days spent apart. Thomas begins constructing a nursery in the Rose Room and that’s when it truly occurs to Lucille that there will be a child with them in nine months. Even more surprising is her unbridled excitement at the prospect. She’d never thought to be a parent. But now… Thomas already loves the child he carries. Lucille finds it hard not to as well.

_We are independent_ , she thinks, watching him carve out the pieces for a new cradle in his workshop. _At last, the nightmare is over and morning has come._

Not everything is easy. Neither of them is prepared for Thomas’s constant exhaustion or for his bouts of vomiting throughout each day. But they draw their strength from each other. And the thrills she gets from the weak smiles he gives her when she tends to him are worth it.

There’s time to be spent specifically together as well. Illness doesn’t affect Thomas’s desires. For a while, Lucille finds him almost insatiable. But there are parts that extend beyond the physical.

“Tell me what you learned at school,” Lucille says to him eagerly one evening and he obligingly takes out his schoolbooks to show her. She pours over the endless pages of notes, all in Thomas’s messy scrawl, staring in wonder. The notes are mostly illegible, but she envies him nonetheless. “How wonderful to know so much,” she says softly. 

“What do you want to learn?” She sees by his expression that he’s not mocking her. Every evening after, he teaches her the beginnings of Greek. On a whim, they learn Italian together with the aid of some dusty volumes in the library. After all, they may need it one day. And isn’t it a joy simply to learn it and learn it together?

His belly begins to swell; his breasts come in. Thomas bites his lip and frowns at his reflection.

“I want her,” he says to Lucille -- he’s quite sure it’s a girl -- “I’m just not at all sure about _this._ ” He gestures at his softening body. 

“Oh, I don’t know,” Lucille says and comes behind him to wrap her arms around him. “You look alright to me.”

Thomas keeps most of the details of his days at school to himself. But Lucille knows better than to assume they were easy. He never mentions any friends he had. There is the occasional insinuation of hallway fights, being beaten by bigger boys. 

He moves into the Rose Room that winter, his belly growing rounder each day. Lucille reads to him, brings him his meals, and strokes his hair until he sleeps. The closer he gets to the end, the more nervous he becomes. 

“What if I got it wrong, Lucy?” he whispered fretfully one night. “What if we’ll be just as terrible as Mamma and Pappa --”

“Shhh. You know you won’t be.” She kisses him. “You’re too gentle for that.”

The cradle in the corner is trimmed with fresh bedding. His frets ease into a soft smile in sleep, one hand resting on his belly. Lucille takes his other hand and tries to sleep herself. The nightmare is over, but this doesn’t mean that she’s forever free of it. When they both wake from their respective nightmares, they spend the rest of the night trading names.

“Jane? Or Christine.”

“I like Jane.”

“Or Elizabeth. Diana.”

“Jane.”

“And Henry if it’s a boy.”

“Yes.”

 

_“Lucy!”_

Thomas’s panicked cry makes Lucille abandon her preparations for breakfast in favor of running to her brother’s aid. He lies on the bed in the Rose Room, eyes wide and frightened as he clutches his stomach beneath his nightshirt. He sees her in the doorway. 

“Lucy, I think it’s started.”

His hand leaves bruises on her wrists where he clings to her, insistent that she stay by his side.

“Yes, yes. I’m here. I won’t leave you, I promise.” The babbling vows she makes feel uncomfortably similar to the ones she made during the panic of that night seven years before. She closes her eyes and she can hear it all in her mind in perfect detail.

_“Lucy -- Lucy -- Lucy --”_

_“What do you want me to do?”_

_“Lucy!”_

_“Shhh… I’m here, I’m here, I’m here! I just don’t -- what --”_

_“Please…”_

_“I won’t leave you…”_

_“Ah -- ahh--”_

“Lucy!” 

His cry of pain brings her back to the present, to the dark flux slipping over the sheets between his bent legs. She swallows hard. Blood doesn’t frighten her, but listening to her brother’s high-pitched cries and strangled tears hurts her in ways she hasn’t anticipated. She kneels beside him on the bed and tries not to weep herself. That will only make him more distressed. 

His chest heaves and he shrieks in pain. He sinks his teeth into his fist, his entire body trembling. The sheets grow redder and still nothing.

“Why did I do this?” he moans. “Lucy -- _ahhh --_ ” It’s all that Lucille can take. She bursts into tears and, sure enough, Thomas grows still more panicked. “Lucy, please don’t -- it’s alright -- I can -- _ahhh...”_ His voice is growing hoarse with the intensity of each cry. Lucy crawls to the foot of the bed just in time to see more blood slip wetly into a growing scarlet puddle on the sheets. The flow is steady, save for when he cries out. Then it quickens. Her heart skips a beat -- she looks back at her brother’s face and realizes with a jolt how pale he is. Sweat gleams on his forehead. He looks almost gray. He’s losing too much blood. She leaps to her feet and presses a kiss to his trembling, colorless lips. 

“I’ll be back,” she whispers. At his panicked whimpers of protest, she continues. “There are some things we need. Just for a few minutes,” she adds soothingly, trying to placate him. Hot tears slip down her cheeks. “I just need to get what we need.” 

“Lucy, don’t leave me!”

“I’ll be right back.” She squeezes his bare knee. “I promise.”

Thomas nods miserably and covers his mouth with his hand to stop another cry. Sweat drips off his forehead onto the pillow. His legs shake.

Lucille runs first to the library for the medical books she set aside months earlier, praying she’d not need them, then to the kitchen for the water, alcohol,  rags, and -- she swallows -- the knife. Then upstairs to the Green Room for the morphine and syringe that is still hidden in her mother’s dresser drawer. Then to the Rose Room once more and her terrified, delirious brother.

He is nearly hyperventilating when she gives him the morphine; she soothes him as best she can.

“What if it goes wrong?” he asks and then cries out at another contraction. 

“It won’t,” she promises. “You’ll go to sleep and when you wake, we’ll both be waiting for you. I love you,” she adds, kissing him once more.

When his eyes close and his breathing slows, Lucille cleans both the knife and Thomas’s lower stomach in alcohol, then steels herself for the job at hand.

The blade pierces flesh, red blossoms over white, and the strange, awful calm rushes over her.

 

When Thomas wakes later, Lucille sits in the chair at his side, blank-faced.

“Where is she?” he asks muzzily. She can only gulp. “Lucy?” She bites her lip. Her eyes flick for a moment to the small, bloody shape in the cradle. “Lucy, please. What’s happened?”

She cannot bring herself to do it. 

“You’ll scar,” she says, “but it should be fairly neat.”

“Lucy, what’s going on?” 

The rising apprehension in his voice is too much. Lucille silently goes to the cradle and lifts the baby out. Thomas’s face goes blank and then falls altogether as she hands it to him without a word. What can she say? Thomas touches its face with one fingertip.

“Stillbirth?” he says at last, hollowly.

“No. She lived for about a minute.” Tears surface in Thomas’s eyes and she can feel them pricking in her own. 

“She didn’t get to see me.”

The pronoun is out of habit -- in reality, it is impossible to know what the child is. Parts of it simply haven’t developed yet. It is small and misshapen where it lies in Thomas’s arms. He cradles it like a wounded bird.

“It must have been the hormones,” he murmurs dully.

“Thomas --”

“I wish good things would happen for once.” He meets her gaze, eyes red. “Why won't good things happen to us?” Lucille shakes her head. 

“I don’t know,” she whispers. “Thomas, I’m --” She breaks off as Thomas leans back against the pillow and clutches the corpse to his chest, rocking it back and forth as his shoulders shook with silent tears.

She takes the baby from him once he falls asleep and buries it in the clay pits, knowing that Thomas won’t want to watch. When he wakes in a panic several hours later -- _Lucy, where is she?!_ \-- she explains what she’s done and, seeing his distress, gives him one of her old dolls to cradle. 

He doesn’t leave the bed for another two months. 

Lucille brings him food, feeds him by hand when he won’t do it himself, carries him to and from the bath. The silence has come again. The color vanishes. Lucille never dreamed in her days at the asylum that she would ever loathe the return of that numbness, but watching Thomas tread the same path of misery that she had is worse than slicing him open and drawing the baby out. The sheets on which he gave birth are burned. Lucille cleans his scars each day. When she wakes to find him sobbing late at night, she presses closer and rocks him back and forth until morning.

Things turn better. He stands on his own, talks a little more. He is able to draw his own bath and perform other such tasks for himself, giving Lucille a chance to rest for the first time in what seems like years. But there is still a deadness in his eyes that pains her to see. It appears only when he thinks she’s not looking. 

She is roused from her sleep one day by a loud _thunk_ from upstairs. 

“Thomas?”

Feet thud up the staircase. He is not in the Rose Room, not in the bathroom. Lucille climbs higher. Not in her room. Further on to the attic. The door will not open; she shoves with a grunt of exertion and it wrenches free beneath her weight. The first thing she sees is the chair toppled over in the corner, then Thomas’s bare feet swinging back and forth, pendulum-like, then his reddening face, then, finally, the hemp rope around his neck --

She runs to catch him, wrapping her arms around his legs and shoving upward. The rope twists roughly against his neck, brutally tearing his skin with its rough fibers. A scream for help pierces the silence of the house, pointlessly. There is no one who can come to their aid.

Somehow she pulls him free of the noose; brother and sister go sprawling onto the hard floor of the attic. He lies limp on her chest as Lucille sobs into his shoulder, her arms wrapped around him so he cannot break free. 

“Never again, do you hear me?” she whispers when she puts him to bed after bandaging his bleeding throat. “You are worth too much to me. Never do that to me again.” She climbs behind him, wraps her arms around his thin back. “I’m so sorry,” she weeps. “I’m so sorry. What have I done to you, my love?”

 

He becomes more or less her prisoner. Lucille locks him in during the day and locks them both in at night, sleeping with the key in her bodice. Thomas begs her otherwise at first, but eventually, his protests mellow into acceptance, and through that into gratefulness. 

Five months after childbirth, Thomas steps into the workshop for the second time and sets to work. He’s had an idea: a harvester that can turn their clay mines into gold. Lucille goes with him, watches him glance up at the rafters in trepidation before beginning his preliminary sketches.

“You should move your workshop somewhere else,” Lucille murmurs. “There are too many memories here.”

“There are memories all over the house, wherever one goes,” he says with a sad smile and goes back to drawing.

A kind of peace is reached. They spend their days in the shop: Thomas working, Lucille reading.

“It’s just a matter of funding,” he says to her one afternoon on a break for tea. “A project this size will require an indecent amount of financial support.”

Lucille hands him a cup of tea and then adds sugar to her own cup, staring down into it. 

“We’ll find a way,” she says. “We always do.”

 

Thomas falls ill a week later and the delicate house of cards they’d been unwittingly constructing topples over. He runs in a panic from the house into the rain, only to slip and fall in the scarlet mud. Lucille falls to her knees beside him, ignoring the red stains spreading over her frock as she puts her arms around him. His scent is sweet and dulls every other sense, but she cannot touch him with desire. Not this time.

“Pappa, Pappa, Pappa --” he babbles and tries to stand, but Lucille pulls him back down. “I have to run -- have to go --”

“No, _no.”_ She is weeping herself as she crawls on top of him to hold him there against the ground. “He can’t hurt you.” Cold rain beats down on her head, soaking through her clothes to the skin. She and Thomas shiver with cold.

“He’ll find us --”

“ _No._ ” 

He stares up at her, eyes wide and frightened in the rain. Lucille can see herself perfectly reflected in his pupils. “Lucy?”

“You’re safe. We’re both safe. Nothing will ever harm you again. I promise.”

“Lucy…” A hiccuping, child-like sob bursts from his throat.

“We’ll be alright.” She strokes his wet hair back, blinking back hot tears. “We’re going to be just fine, my darling. I promise you that.”

* * *

1896

Lucille fell silent at last and Edith wiped at her eyes, lips parted as she tried to find something to say that wouldn’t feel contrived. 

“And that was the beginning of his aversion?” she asked finally. Lucille nodded, eyes closed. Her lashes were wet.

“He just couldn’t stand to be touched. I think it was the melancholy. And the birth.” 

Edith looked at Thomas where he still lay curled against Lucille. 

“When he’s ill, does he usually let -- let you --”

“When he can stand it. He has good months and bad months, like we all do.” Lucille stroked his hair absently. “When he can’t, he takes an excess of his hormones and hopes for the best. I hate it when he does it,” she added. “God only know what it’s doing to him.” She let out a breath, sniffing a little. “You see why I have to care for him,” she said. “He’s so delicate…”

“And you, Lucille?” Edith asked. “Did he ever give back some of that care?”

Lucille bit her lip, looking uncomfortable. 

“I don’t need his care. I don’t need _affection_ the way he does. He can’t supply it in any case. He’s too fragile. He’s not in a position to be able to. I don’t need it.”

“Yes, you do.” Edith leaned forward and put a hand on her arm. “You’re crying out for it. You’ve spent so long taking care of him that perhaps you’ve forgotten that you need it in the first place.”

Lucille laughed derisively, but weakly all the same.

“And you think you’re the one who can remind me of it?”

“I do.” 

They held each other’s gaze for the briefest moment. Then Lucille turned to the tray and refilled Thomas’s water glass. “Here,” she said softly, propping him up again to feed him it. When he’d drunk a little -- still asleep -- she replaced the glass and slumped back against the pillows. “You’re too good for me,” she said. “You know what I’ve done now. What I did to _him._ ”

“Lucy, you can’t say that all of that was your fault --”

“But if I hadn’t weakened that night, then he wouldn’t have gone away, he wouldn’t have fallen pregnant, and he wouldn’t still be grieving!” She shook her head. “Sometimes I think we’re better off dead.”

“No.” Edith caught her hand. “No, you’re not.”

“What do you know about it?”

“I know what you’ve told me. And I know from the evidence of my own eyes that you’re in pain. But you’re not -- you can’t --” She faltered. “What would I do without you?”

Lucille stood abruptly, picked up the tray, and left the room. Edith hesitated, looking back at Thomas -- should she leave him? -- then went after Lucille, deciding that Thomas would be alright for the moment.

She found her in the kitchen downstairs, refilling the pitcher. 

“Lucille.”

Lucille looked over her shoulder at her and then immediately turned back to the sink. Slowly, the way one might approach a bird, Edith stepped closer. 

“Edith, please.” She sounded distracted, almost annoyed. 

“Have you had some water yet?” Lucille froze. The pitcher was overflowing, water cascading over her hands. 

“No,” she said after a moment. “No, I -- I forgot.” 

“Let me.” Edith took the now-heavy pitcher from her. Water splashed into the third glass. “Here.”

Lucille gulped the water down and set the glass back onto the tray. She was a little out of breath, her lashes still wet from crying. 

Edith put her hands on her shoulders and kissed her. 

Almost immediately Lucille’s lips were moving against her own; Edith pressed her back against the nearby cupboard, hands sliding down over her breasts to rest at her waist. 

Lucille turned her face away, much in the same manner that Thomas had on their wedding night, with her cheek almost against Edith’s lips.

“Thomas,” she murmured. “We shouldn’t. Not with him upstairs… Someone should be with him...” Her eyes said something different. 

“Lucille,” said Edith, cradling her cheek. “You don’t need to live for him.” She ran her thumb over her lower lip, watched Lucille close her eyes at the sensation. “You’re allowed to feel.”

Lucille kissed her, desperate and demanding, and it was like nothing Edith had known. Kissing Thomas was about care, control, and sometimes she did it simply to feel his knees go weak and to have him settle against her. Kissing Lucille was recognition, comfort, equality. She had the strangest thought that if she were to fall, Lucille would be there to catch her and help her up, just as Edith would for her. 

The kiss was broken by a sudden fit of coughing on Edith’s part. She turned away and felt something give unpleasantly in her throat. When she pulled her hand back, the cuff of Thomas’s dressing gown was wet and darkened. 

A hiccuping sob made her look to Lucille, who gazed at her with her mouth covered, dark eyes glimmering. 

“What is it?” Edith combed her hair from her face, chased one tear with her thumb. 

“I can’t do this,” Lucille murmured, her voice barely on the edge of hearing, and buried her head in Edith’s shoulder. Edith pulled her tight. 

“What can’t you do?” She didn’t reply. “I’m here now,” Edith whispered, clearing her throat. The spasm stung and she could taste more blood. “I’m here.”

“What’ll we do?” Lucille pulled back to look at her, hand in her tangled hair. “We’ll have to tell Thomas if we want to go on… I don’t know how any of the last few days will define us.”

“Let’s let him decide,” Edith said. She was pleased to see a look of approval in Lucille’s eye. “Until then…” She glanced down as their hands linked, Lucille’s fingers so much longer than her own. “Let me at least stay at your side.” Lucille smiled tightly.

“I don’t think I could send you away if I tried.”

* * *

_“It had been her fortune to possess a finer mind than most of the persons among whom her lot was cast; to have a larger perception of surrounding facts, and to care for knowledge that was tinged with the unfamiliar…”_

Edith stole a glance from the book they’d taken upstairs from the library and smiled shyly when she caught Lucille’s eye. They’d come back to bed and taken their places on either side of Thomas, passing the book back and forth to read out to each other. Thomas dozed more or less peacefully, save for a few moments of unease. But then the one of them who wasn’t reading would soothe him and balance would be restored. Edith was a little disconcerted by how much she enjoyed seeing Lucille and him curled up together -- this was beyond the moral pale, no matter one’s point of view, but she couldn’t help the thrill she got in her belly. It was… alluring? And the way they so obviously cared for each other… Edith decided to shelve her feelings for analysis at a later date. She loved Thomas and she loved Lucille too. If anything, this probably would make things easier for them all. When she really thought about it, it wasn’t terribly surprising. She wondered how she hadn’t caught it before.

Thomas was naked where he lay against on the bed. It was really the first time she’d seen him like this: bare, stretched out across the bed. His scars were white and pink lines against his flesh. Now that she knew and understood where most of them had come from, she felt that she knew him better. The rough line across his throat, the bruised and abused skin of his arm, the thin lines over his torso, the long, neat scars over his pelvis. 

She was roused from her thoughts by Thomas stirring beside her. A tremor ran through his body.

“He’s waking,” said Lucille. “We may as well stop. This could be difficult.” Edith laid the book aside and turned towards her husband, tentatively laying a hand on his shoulder. But Lucille shook her head and so she removed it. 

Thomas opened his eyes and stared blankly at them both. Then he groaned, rolled over, and buried his head in the pillow. Edith heard him take slow, deliberate breaths, his shoulders shaking. Slowly he sat up. His eyes were red.

“Lucy…” He looked down at himself, realized he was naked, and furtively wrapped his arms around his chest.

“It’s alright.” Lucille reached over and pulled the coverlet from the bed to wrap it around her brother’s shoulders. Thomas stared numbly down at his bare thighs. A sudden sob burst from his throat and he covered his mouth to stifle it. Lucille gave a soft laugh of pity, pulling the covers more tightly around him as he shook with the force of his sobs. “It’s alright,” she crooned. “It’s all over now. Shhh. It’s all over.” Eventually, he quietened. “Would you like a bath?” Thomas nodded, his eyes closed, clutching the blanket around himself. Lucille stood. “Alright. I’ll go and run it. Edith, can you stay with him?”

“Of course.” 

“Remember.” Lucille caught her hand, speaking in an anxious monotone. “Don’t touch him unless he asks you to. If he starts to cry, don’t try to --”

“Lucille, it’ll be fine,” Edith said soothingly. She squeezed her hand. “I promise.” 

Lucille gave her a weak smile and then slipped out of the bedroom to the bathroom down the corridor. Edith turned to Thomas.

“Hello.” 

He smiled a little uncertainly. “Hello.” He hesitated.  “Edith, my memories are a little vague. Did… did we _all…?_ ”

She nodded. “It seemed easiest.”

For the first time since he’d woken, he made eye contact with her. Edith stared, transfixed. Everything was exactly the same and yet… perhaps it was her perception of him that had altered. He seemed somehow more beautiful than before. _Mine_ , she thought. She reached out and then stopped.

“May I?”

He nodded after a moment’s hesitation and closed his eyes as her fingers traced gently over his cheek. His skin felt impossibly smooth, like the sleeve of a silk frock. He was touching her, too -- tentatively running his fingertips down the side of her neck with something approaching wonder. _So this is what a bond is,_ Edith thought. 

“May I kiss you?” she asked. He shook his head immediately.

“Not just yet.”

Lucille appeared in the doorway, ghostly in her ripped chemise, her hair hanging around her waist. Edith saw Thomas look up at her, that same wonder still in his eyes. _He’s_ not _mine,_ she thought. _But perhaps that’s alright._

“It’s almost ready,” Lucille said, coming forward. “Here. Let me help you.” Thomas took her arm and leaned on both her and Edith, standing unsteadily. His face suddenly drained of blood and his legs buckled beneath him. Lucille and Edith caught him and more or less dragged him to the bathroom. Carefully, so as to touch him as little as possible, they lowered him into the warm water that filled the bath; Thomas groaned and closed his eyes as the water slid up around his chest. “Edith?” Lucille asked as she knelt by the bath, stroking Thomas’s hair back from his forehead. “Could you go to the bedroom and find him a dressing gown?” Edith nodded and went, selecting his blue and black striped one from the wardrobe. 

Movement on one wall caught her eye. She stopped in front of the large mirror set against one wall, taking in her reflection. Her hair was tangled, loose and wild where it tumbled around her shoulders, her lips unnaturally red and still a little swollen. Wrapped in a dressing gown that was too big for her, she felt new. A little older and a little more, well, _alive._ She could now count herself among the adults who knew the realities of how their world worked. And what a world it was. 

It was with a fresh spring in her step that she returned to the bathroom, Thomas’s other dressing gown draped over one arm. Lucille and Thomas were bent close, their hands linked over the side of the bath. 

“... just have to wait and see,” Thomas murmured. Lucille looked past him to where Edith stood in the doorway and Thomas turned to look at her. He smiled tiredly as she knelt at his other side. “Edith.”

“Hello.” She took his other hand and pressed it to her lips. _Mine, mine, mine._

“Lucille was just telling me about the both of you,” he said softly. Edith’s eyes flicked to Lucille, who swallowed hard.

“I should have told you earlier. I’m sorry.” Her voice was shaking. “I didn’t think it was supposed to happen after bonding with someone. I didn’t want you to think you were being replaced.”

“I don’t feel that way,” Thomas said soothingly, putting a hand out to touch her cheek. “It’s alright. You… you let me have Edith. I’d be a hypocrite if I denied you this.”

“I’ve made you suffer for so long. I don’t want you to think that I’m abandoning you.”

“Lucille, _stop_ it.” He let go of Edith’s hand to seize both of Lucille’s. “You know that I don’t blame you for anything that’s happened.” When Lucille remained unconvinced, he sighed. “When I told you that I’d fallen in love with Edith, do you remember how you insisted that I go through with it?”

“Because you deserve something in your life that isn’t tainted!”

“Well, I could say the same for you, darling.” 

Lucille stared at him, tears brimming in her eyes, shaking her head slightly. “No. No. _You’re_ innocent. _You’re_ perfect. I’m --”

Thomas kissed her before she could say another word.

“You know how I hate it when you talk that way,” he murmured. “If it helps, think of Edith. Edith --” He turned to her, who had been watching them in silent pity. “How long have you wanted my sister?”

She had to smile. “Since I first looked at her.”

“And I you,” Lucille whispered. She shook her head, looking away. “I thought something was wrong with me. I’ve already bonded and then Edith… another Alpha…” She ran her tongue over her lower lip. “Sometimes I wonder if all of this -- Alpha, Omega, bonding -- doesn’t just make it harder for us.”

“In the end,” said Edith, “I don’t think it really matters.”

“Lucille,” said Thomas, sounding weary, “you’re not hurting me. What are you waiting for?” He squeezed Lucille’s hand. “You deserve to have someone who isn’t afraid of being touched, who isn’t constantly looking over his shoulder, who --”

“Thomas --”

“I don’t like to be intimate. You know that.” He looked from one woman to the other. “And I know that you and Edith do. If you care for each other, why hold back? Don’t deny yourselves on my account.”

Silence. Thomas sagged back against the rim of the bath, having clearly exhausted himself. Edith coughed, winced at the stinging in her throat, and then spoke.

“Lucille… you know how I feel. I --” She flushed. “Those days we spent. All together. I kept waiting for you to touch me. Longing for you to. When you did, it would be by accident or out of necessity. But whenever it happened…” She smiled. “I felt as though I’d caught fire.”

Lucille didn’t speak for a long expanse of minutes, staring at neither Edith nor Thomas. Finally, she looked up at Edith.

“I need you.”

Her voice was rough, barely audible. But it was enough for Edith to lean over the bath and kiss her for the third time that day. 

“I’m going to make sure you’re alright,” she murmured. “Both of you.” She reached down into the water and found Thomas’s hand, smiled as he pressed his cheek against her shoulder. “You don’t need to hide anymore. It’s all over now.”

* * *

Thomas went back to work two days later, the same day the workers returned. The rumor seemed to have spread from the post office that Lady Sharpe was under the weather, and the men had known better than to take their chances by coming to work. During those two days, Edith and Lucille focused their attentions on Thomas: walking him about the house to help him regain the use of his legs, making sure he ate and drank, keeping him entertained. Lucille had been right; Thomas was significantly more subdued now that the cycle had ended.

Now he put on his coat and scarf.

“You’re certain it won’t show?” he asked them both.

“You’re fine,” Edith said. “The hormones will take care of it.” He’d given himself another injection that morning, the first in several months. Edith tried not to show her disappointment, but watching him calmly push the needle into his arm made her sad, as much as the Alpha scent made her frustrated. She knew from the way Lucille bit her lip that she didn’t enjoy it either. “Good luck today. Stay warm.” Edith kissed him and then stepped back to let Lucille do the same. It was still quite strange watching them together. But they were undeniably more at peace. 

“Make sure you come in when you get too cold,” Lucille murmured. From the stairwell, they both watched him descend the stairs and step outside. He lifted an arm and called a greeting to the waiting men, and then the doors closed behind him. 

“I always worry he’ll be found out,” Lucille said softly. They stood 

“I know,” Edith said. “What would happen if he were?”

“What little reputation we have left would be gone in a heartbeat. We’d likely have to leave. And if they found out about the baby, it would be worse. Then they might try to…” She trailed off and Edith didn’t ask her to continue. Her imagination was doing quite well on its own. “People don’t understand what it means, being Omega and a man.” 

Edith stepped closer to her and put an arm around her waist. 

“Anymore than they understand us,” she said. Lucille sighed and wrapped her arm around Edith. 

“Yes.” She glanced at her, half-smiling. “I’m glad I met you.”

“And I you.” 

They kissed, a brief brush of lips against lips. Lucille’s nose brushed the side of Edith’s. Their hands entwined together. 

“Shall we?” Edith whispered. Lucille smiled slightly.

“Alright.”

* * *

Lucille’s bedroom was unexpectedly dark and cavernous, with strange bits of furniture that had no place there. Butterflies beat their thin wings in jars. Books covered every available surface. A vase of dying flowers stood on her night table. When Edith ducked inside, she disturbed a flock of moths who had been feasting on the faded scarlet wallpaper. A thick layer of dust rested on nearly everything, including the mirror in the corner.

“This is who I am,” Lucille said, sitting on her bed and looking up at Edith. “I hope you know that.”

“I do,” said Edith, “and I’m here anyway.” She sat beside her. The briefest of smiles flashed between them. And then Edith kissed her again, slowly easing Lucille back against the pillows, hands linking together as she ran her lips over her throat, down her sternum through her chemise, over her stomach. Hands pushed Lucille’s skirt up around her hips and lingered there as Edith kissed each thigh, then licked a delicate stripe over her folds. Her eyes danced at Lucille’s intake of breath as she pursed her lips against her bud. She was as fragile as the wings of the butterflies in the jars on her dressing table, her skin softer than satin. Edith almost feared she might tear her. 

Blue eyes met eyes just as blue; Lucille was flushed, breasts heaving, one long leg draped over Edith’s shoulder. Edith could feel her heel pressed into the small of her back.

“Edith… Edith --” Her voice ceased abruptly as she closed her eyes, hips jerking upward against Edith’s mouth. She ran her tongue back and forth over her bud until Lucille made a sound that seemed almost panicked in her throat. Edith crawled up to her, met her with an open-mouthed kiss. Reaching down to pull up Edith’s chemise, Lucille pressed her lips to her neck, teeth scraping the skin there as her hand reached between Edith’s legs. Edith groaned, rolling her hips into the caress. One slender finger slipped inside her and Edith grabbed Lucille’s free hand as her fingertip stroked against her wall. Lucille let go of Edith’s hand and reached up to undo the drawstring of Edith’s chemise and pull it off one shoulder and over her breasts, lips trailing over her collarbone as she slipped another finger into her. Gooseflesh erupted over Edith’s arms and back at the wash of cold air against her skin. Lips on hers again, tongues slipping into mouths. Lucille bent her head to Edith’s breasts, taking a nipple into her mouth.

“Ah -- Lu --”

A third finger, then a fourth. Edith panted hard, sweat rolling between the hollow of her breasts and down her spine. She felt stretched, fuller than she could ever remember being, and there was Lucille, eyes dark with lust, rolling her nipple between her teeth, lips unnaturally red from kissing her --  her orgasm was a jolt deep within her core. 

They stared at each other: Edith straddling Lucille’s hips, Lucille breathing hard. Edith lifted her hips, closing her eyes as Lucille pulled her fingers free of her. Almost absentmindedly she brought them to her mouth and sucked them clean. Edith watched her do it through a haze of contentment. On impulse, ignoring the fingers still in Lucille’s mouth, she bent down and kissed her, sighing as Lucille wrapped her arms around her and rolled her onto her back. Lucille’s hair was a dark curtain around them both, falling into Edith’s own locks. 

“I love you,” Edith murmured. Lucille gazed down at her, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear. Her hands were trembling and it seemed for a moment that she’d seen a tear glimmer in Lucille’s eye. 

“I love you too,” she whispered. She pressed her lips down into her hair. “I love you too.” Her hand slipped down to cup Edith’s breast. “I love you.” A kiss to her sternum, to the curve of her other breast, to the crook of her elbow. “I love you, I love you, I love you…” Edith tucked her bare thigh between Lucille’s, groaning at the wet sensation against her skin as she settled against her. 

“I love you --”

“I love you…”

And so on, into the afternoon. 

* * *

They rose around four o’clock and dressed each other -- properly, with corsets and frocks. Edith sat behind Lucille and brushed out her hair, then pinned it up for her. It was strangely intimate to lace each other’s clothes and tuck their images back into place. Not entirely, though; some cracks remained in their facade, such as the rather lovely bite mark on Edith’s throat that her collar couldn’t cover. She smiled to herself, stroking it with a fingertip in the mirror as she imagined Thomas’s face when he saw it.

But first, there was some business to attend to. She’d left her books in the library on that day -- nearly a week ago! -- when she and Thomas had gone to the post office. Now that their household was again functional, she couldn’t leave them lying out. There was a chance that Lucille or Thomas might run across their mother’s journal. And she couldn’t risk that. 

To her relief, the books were where she’d left them. Gathering them to her chest, she glanced out the window -- snow was falling again. _Thomas will probably come in soon,_ she thought. _We should send the men off with something._ She made a mental note to mention it to Lucille.

A thud behind her made her look over her shoulder. 

Several feet away, one of the books had fallen from its shelf, lying open on the dusty carpet. She frowned. _Thunk._ Another book followed, closer this time. _Thunk._ Another. _Thunk. Thunk. Thunk._ Edith instinctively took a step back, leaning against the desk as books began raining down from the shelves that towered around her. 

Silence. 

The desk chair suddenly shot out from the desk, flew across the floor and overturned with a crash. Edith dropped her books in alarm. Then cried out as something seized her hand, pulling her arm forward and taut. The scent of blood filled her nose. 

“ _Foolish child,”_ something hissed in her ear. _“What have you done?”_

It was the voice of the creature from the night she’d told the others. The old Lady Sharpe. 

“What do you --”

_“Don’t you have eyes in your head, you little slut?”_

There was nothing before her, yet tears filled Edith’s eyes at the vice-like grip around her wrist. But her anger outweighed her pain.

“Go away,” she snarled. “I know what you did.”

_“You little whore --”_

“I know what you did and if you think I will help you anymore --” Edith ran out of air, heart pounding as her volume grew. “You were cold, contemptible, cruel, and nothing you tell me can persuade me to help you any longer. It’s over,” she said through gritted teeth. “It’s _done.”_

The pressure on her wrist lifted and she drew it back immediately, cradling it to her chest. 

The book sailed out of nowhere and struck Edith across the face with a burst of pain that made Edith cry out. Then dropped like a stone to the floor. Edith clapped a hand to her throbbing nose. She picked up the nearest book -- the Sharpe genealogy -- and hurled it down the aisle; it stopped several inches short of the bookshelf and then fell to rest beside two scarlet, skeletal feet. Edith looked up into the eyes of Beatrice Sharpe for the second time and recognized the blinding fury there. 

“It’s over. I won’t help you,” she said, one hand curling around the side of the desk, the other rubbing at the rising bruise on her face. “Go rot.”

The specter gazed at her and shook its head as if in resignation. With small, agonized steps, it turned away and slowly picked its way down the aisle until it rounded the corner of the final bookshelf and then passed from Edith’s view entirely. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By the way, you guys: comments are what keep me writing. If I don't get human response, I feel like I've done something wrong with the chapter. Give me validation, people!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're approaching the home stretch, you guys! Two more chapters after this!

Thomas found her several minutes later, seated on the floor against the desk, clutching her stomach with one hand and her nose in the other. Books were scattered across the aisle, the chair overturned at the far end. 

“Edith?”

“What are you doing here?” Edith asked. She felt disoriented and ill, the way she often was after a visitation.

“I came in to get warm. How…”

He knelt down beside her. Cold hands touched her cheek and brought her gaze up to his; his eyebrows wrinkled in concern when he noticed the redness of her eyes.

“It’s nothing,” she said. “I just -- I saw --” She removed her hand and realized with a start that it was stained red.

“Good god, you’re bleeding!” Thomas exclaimed and helped her up. Edith leaned against him for support, her stomach lurching unpleasantly as he settled her onto the desk. Thomas called over his shoulder for Lucille and then turned back to her, confusion written across his face. “What happened?”

“I met your mother again,” Edith said softly, squeezing his hand when she saw the flicker of apprehension in his eyes. “She went away. You’re alright.”

“But she…” Thomas gingerly traced the smarting bridge of her nose with his fingers. “She hurt you…”

“What is it?” Lucille appeared around the corner of the bookshelf and visibly started at the chaos. “What happened here?”

“Lucille --” Thomas stepped aside, granting Lucille a view of Edith, blood dripping from her nose. She rushed forward, skirts rustling over the carpet as she came to a stop in front of the desk. 

“How did you --”

“She says Mamma came to her again,” Thomas said in an undertone. The same apprehension Edith had seen in Thomas’s eyes now flickered in Lucille’s. She put a hand on Lucille’s shoulder. 

“She’s gone now.”

“Let me… let me get you something for that.” She hurried away. Thomas took her hands. 

“What happened?” he asked. Edith shook her head and then winced at the sudden ache in her temples. 

“I told her I wasn’t helping her anymore.”

“You did?” Thomas’s eyes grew wide. “What… what changed your mind?”

“I…” Edith hesitated. “I found your mother’s diary about a week ago. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to upset you. The things I read there… I don’t want to help someone like that.”

“Edith…” Thomas’s voice shook. “You…”

“I’m sorry, I just --”

“No, no, it’s alright --” Thomas ceased speaking as Lucille returned. She’d wrapped a handful of ice -- or perhaps that was snow -- in several rags; now she gave it to Edith and had her press it gently to her nose. She hissed at the coldness against her tender flesh.

“Lucille,” Thomas began softly, “Edith was just saying that she’s giving up on her plan with the apparitions.”

Lucille reached forward and caught Edith’s head. “Don’t lean back, it’ll make the bleeding worse. But Edith… is this true?”

“She threw a book at my face,” Edith said flatly. “I’m not helping her. And -- and I know what she did to you… I can’t help someone who does things like that.”

Lucille touched her hand where it rested on her knee. 

“I’m sorry you had to find out,” she said. A pause. “She used to throw books at us, too.”

“I think,” said Edith, “she wanted me to find out about you two… The things she said…” She thought for a moment of how the specter had simply walked away, as if giving up. “I don’t think she’ll come back.”

“What of the other ghosts?” Thomas asked. 

“I don’t know,” said Edith. “And I don’t think I really _want_ to.” 

“Then it really is over?” Thomas asked, sounding a little anxious. “You’re not going on with it?”

“No.”

Thomas suddenly turned away, covering his mouth with his hand. Edith heard a strangled sob.

“Thomas?”

“It’s fine, I’m fine,” he managed between gasps. Lucille reached over and touched his shoulder. “I’ll be alright.”

“Thomas, what is it?”

“I’m just -- I’m sorry, I’m still a little… emotional…” He sat down on the floor, leaning against the bookcase. “I just -- I can’t stand to see you hurt. That’s all.”

“It’s alright,” said Edith, a little bemusedly. “It really isn’t that serious --” To her bemusement, Lucille looked close to tears herself. “Really. It’s fine.”

“You --” Lucille closed her eyes and took a breath. “You should never have had to know what she was like. For yourself, I mean.” She touched Edith’s cheek, sighing. “I wish I could keep you safe from everything they did.”

“It’s over now,” Edith said gently. “Really.” Thomas stood again and kissed her head, then laid his cheek where his lips had been. She smiled and rubbed her head against him. The Alpha scent was strong in her nose between Thomas and Lucille, but it didn’t matter to her quite so much. “It’s all done.”

* * *

There was a particular chill in the air that night as Edith and Thomas readied for bed. Modesty wasn’t logical anymore -- not after the last week --  but neither of them particularly cared to linger in any state of undress. But they didn’t turn away from each other anymore. There was no point in it. He caught her staring at him once as he slipped out of his trousers. She’d paused with her brush in her hair, lips parted. Then lowered her eyes, half-smiling, embarrassed.

“It’s alright,” Thomas murmured. He went to her, leaving his trousers in a pile on the floor, and tentatively took her hand. “You can look if you want.” 

Edith _did_ look. It was hard to take her eyes off him with the new bond between them. At times she thought she could hear his heartbeat from rooms away. His every touch felt like silk against her skin. And the way he behaved when _she_ touched him -- closed eyes, faint smile, gentle purr -- told her that he felt the same. She put a hand around the back of his neck, his hair brushing her fingers, and brushed her lips against his. Gentle, mouths closed. 

“You’re beautiful,” she whispered into his ear, pressing their cheeks together. “You always have been.” He hummed, pressing closer, and Edith reached over to replace her hairbrush on her dressing table. Then she wrapped her arms around him. 

“I love you.”

“You too.” 

Thomas pulled back to look at her, one hand tracing down the side of her neck and into the collar of her nightdress. His fingers brushed the lovebite Lucille had given her earlier that day; Edith saw the corners of his mouth lift in a crooked yet genuine smile that she’d not seen before.

“I’m glad you’re here for her,” he murmured. “I give her enough trouble as it is.”

“Shh.” Edith made the sound against his lips. “You’re perfect.” He hummed once more as her hands traced over his spine. “And she thinks so, too. Come.” She steered him to the bed, enjoying his sudden bonelessness as she sat down and pulled him into her lap. He settled into her arms, leaning his head back on her shoulder, his eyes closed. The Alpha scent was beginning to wear off, letting his natural pheromones come through. Edith let her own eyes slide shut as she continued to take him in, breathing just loudly enough that he would be aware of it. She wasn’t sure when or where she’d acquired that habit -- probably from the crushes she’d attended throughout the course of her life in Buffalo. The men she knew tended to do that when they wanted to show interest. Thomas seemed to find it charming at any rate: smiling and nuzzling into her neck. 

Buffalo. Those days seemed a world away. The heaviness she’d been unconsciously avoiding suddenly settled back onto her. Tears pricked at her eyes and she pulled Thomas even more tightly against herself, as if trying to glean some comfort from the heat of him. It was hard to accept that there was really nothing holding her to her childhood home anymore. And as much as she loved Thomas and Lucille, part of her raged and raged at being so confined. Locked in the middle of nowhere. She wanted society again. Not Buffalo -- there would be too many memories there, and besides, Mrs McMichael would hardly want her back -- but other places. Paris had been such a breath of air. So liberating. She wondered if Lucille had ever been. 

“Have you and Lucille traveled much?” she asked, after some waiting for the lump in her throat to dissolve. 

“A little,” said Thomas, drowsily from her shoulder. “We tried several places to look for funding. London. Edinburgh. Milan.” He looked up at her through tired eyes. “Why?”

“Just wondered.” She was rocking him back and forth absentmindedly. “Do you ever think of leaving this place?”

“Leave?” Thomas swallowed. “No. No -- no, we can’t.” He hesitated. “Are you very unhappy here, Edith?”

Edith never had to reply because a soft knock on the bedroom door interrupted them. 

“Come in.” 

The door opened slowly, revealing Lucille in her nightdress, her gray dressing gown tied loosely over it. Her hair hung past her waist. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I was interrupting…” She made to close the door.

“No,” said Edith, “it’s alright.”

A long pause and then Lucille coughed.

“May I join you?”

Thomas looked to Edith, who was already nodding. 

“Of course.”

Lucille crept inside, silent as anything, and hesitantly sat down beside Edith. She leaned over to kiss Thomas and Edith felt a flutter of anticipation as Lucille then turned to her. The kiss was small, perfect. 

“Stay,” she whispered. “Every night.”

Lucille smiled weakly. Thomas reached out and took one of her hands.

“Let’s sleep,” he murmured. Edith nodded and slipped out from beneath him to help him under the covers. Then she slid in herself, Lucille snuffing the candle out and then lying down on Thomas’s other side. They pressed more closely together, Thomas humming as he shifted between them. It was bizarre to have the bed so crowded -- her memories of Thomas’s cycle, where sharing had been necessary, were blurred at best -- but it closed out the cold of the rest of the house. 

Lucille reached over Thomas’s waist and found Edith’s hand. Their fingers laced together. Edith fell asleep.

* * *

“Shhhh -- It’s alright -- I’m here -- you’re fine --” Edith opened her eyes to find Thomas sitting upright, bent over a convulsing Lucille. Her eyes were squeezed shut, her head tossing from side to side. Startled, Edith sat up as Thomas continued to try and wake her. “Lucy -- Lucy please --”

“What can I do?” asked Edith. 

“She gets this way when she sleeps,” Thomas said without taking his eyes off his sister. “Here, could you get out of bed? I want to put her in the middle.” Edith obeyed, going around to the other side as Thomas moved backwards, pulling Lucille with him. The space Lucille had vacated was warm from the heat of her body. Edith stroked her shivering back as Thomas held her hands and whispered to her, once even breaking into a low rendition of the lullaby Lucille would play on the piano. After about ten minutes, she calmed into peaceful slumber. Edith buried her face in the back of her neck and linked hands with Thomas as she, too, drifted to sleep once more.

* * *

Edith and Thomas rose early and fixed breakfast, leaving a note upstairs telling Lucille to come down when she was ready. In the middle of laying out the tea things, Lucille appeared in the doorway, her hair loose and dressing gown hanging from one shoulder.

“Let me do that,” she said, coming forward to take the teapot from Edith’s hands. Edith nodded and stood back to allow her to pour each cup. Thomas came behind her, wrapping his arms around her as she laid the pot down at the center of the table in the kitchen.

“You sit down,” he murmured, his tone so tender that Edith had to busy herself with setting out their plates to give them privacy. A creak of wood told her that Lucille had listened. In her periphery, she saw Thomas press a kiss into her hair before taking his own seat. Lucille looked pale and drained and as Edith crossed behind her to reach her own place, she caught hold of her hand and lay her head against Edith’s belly. Her hair was soft as Edith combed her fingers through it. With a slightly apprehensive glance at Thomas -- it felt so strange to be so open -- she bent down and briefly pressed her lips to Lucille’s forehead. 

“Good morning.”

Lucille smiled weakly. “Good morning.” 

Now seated, Edith took a sip of her tea and recoiled at the alien taste of it: no sugar. She’d grown accustomed to one of them bringing her tea loaded with it. 

“Are you alright?” Thomas looked concerned where he sat at the other end of the table. She nodded, reaching for the sugar bowl.

“No more berries?” she asked.

“You seem well enough to me,” Lucille said softly. 

* * *

And so their routine grew: sleeping together, preparing meals together, spending long evenings simply doing what they wanted. All their masks had been torn off by Thomas’s cycle; now they had nothing to hide. It was wonderfully freeing to be able to kiss Lucille whenever she pleased and not feel guilty. Thomas sketched them together once, with an engineer’s precision, as Edith dressed Lucille’s hair, both clad in their underpinnings, Edith’s cheek pressed against the top of Lucille’s head. Smiles on their faces.

It was also impossible to deny how much happier Thomas and Lucille were. Edith still felt conflicted when she caught them kissing, as she sometimes did now. But the siblings laughed more. There was levity in Lucille’s eyes that Edith did not recognize, but even so, she welcomed its presence. And Thomas was quick to make clear his appreciation for their new arrangement. 

“When I’m with you both, I feel as though no one can hurt me,” he told Edith over breakfast one day. “I’ve never felt so safe before.” Edith took his face in her hands and kissed him. 

Another two weeks passed before Edith realized that she had never replied to the condolence letters she’d received so long ago. Steeling herself, she sat down at the desk in the master bedroom -- she tended to avoid the library these days -- and took out the three letters. Alan first.

_16 December 1896_

_Dear Edith,_

_I’m sorry it’s taken so long to get the news of your father to you. If we could have reached you any more quickly, I assure you we would have. As it is, I can only offer you my deepest apologies and condolences. I remember him as fondly as I do my own father. Please know that if you need anything at all during this time, you need only ask and I will do my utmost to provide it. You are closest and oldest friend. Nothing is too great._

_No doubt Ferguson has already told you, but just in case my letter arrives before his, I must inform you that the company has passed to a cousin of yours, not to you. I know it’s an outrage but nothing is to be done, I’m afraid. Moreover, he appears for some reason to be predisposed against Sir Thomas, but I cannot say with any degree of certainty why. I’ll look into it._

_One more thing, Edith -- don’t blame yourself for not having been there. It was a heart attack. There was nothing you could have done to prevent it. His last memories of you were happy ones. Take comfort in that and try to live as fully and as well as you can. I think we both know that that’s what he would have wanted. I remain_

_Your dearest friend,_

_Alan_

Edith wiped tears from her cheeks and sniffed. Perhaps this had been a mistake. Alan’s letter had opened up all the wounds she’d wanted to keep covered, hoping she could forget about them. But perhaps there was no way to forget. She did her best to write a reply, but could only manage the most cursory of thank-yous. It was brief, but Alan would understand.

Eunice’s letter was about what she had expected -- to the point, acceptable, the bare minimum of what was required. She suspected that her mother had read it over before sending it. A cool but sincere reply for her, too. And then there was only Mrs McMichael. Edith took a deep breath, preparing herself for whatever she was about to get. She had not forgotten any part of how the woman had treated her over the years, particularly in the months before her marriage. 

_“No one could want someone like you.”_

_“And why is that?”_

_“Because you’re useless.”_

Edith pushed the old, familiar words away and slit the envelope open with her letter opener. A rasp of paper as she unfolded it and read.

_17 December 1896_

_My dearest Edith,_

_I wish you the deepest condolences for your loss. Losing someone so close is never easy, but I daresay recovery can always be made. I found that after the loss of my husband, throwing myself into social work was what I needed -- although the Lord knows you work hard enough as it is, dear child._

_I loved your father as much as I love you and as much as you did him. His passing has affected us all deeply. And although I may not have always shown it, I look on you with the same affection as I do my own children. I hope that you will look on me as a maternal figure and will not hesitate to turn to me for guidance in not only your grief, but in any and all matters of life._

_All my love,_

_Agatha_

Her tears had turned hot in her growing fury. 

This from the woman who had belittled her and treated her like some sort of animal in a zoo for so much of her life? _My dearest Edith… all my love…_ And she had been the one to insist that her son never marry her because she’d _taint him._ What was she playing at? Who did she think she was fooling?

Hardly realizing what she was doing, she seized another piece of stationery and her pen and immediately began her reply, wiping angry tears from her eyes as she did so.

_26 January 1896_

_Agatha,_

_You presume too much in writing to me in the manner you have. You are_ _not_ _my mother. If you have forgotten, I lost my mother years and years ago. Grief is not new to me. And even if it were, you are the last person to whom I would turn for comfort. For so much of my life, you have shown me nothing me but contempt and ridicule, simply because I do not fit your standards of what a woman should be. I have endured your insults, your condescension, and your abuse for too long. But there was time before my adolescence when I was permitted to be friends with your daughter and when you treated me with civility. Then, perhaps, I could have seen you as a second mother. If you can find a modicum of that woman you once were, then write to me and show it. Otherwise, do not attempt to contact me again. And even if you do find the strength of character to change, I will not forgive you for the injustices I have suffered at your hands._

_Eunice and Alan are free to write as they wish._

_Lady Edith Sharpe_

Edith threw down her pen and turned away from the desk. Her tears had stopped, but her feelings ran on, making her shake in rage. The letter had only expressed the bare minimum of what she felt. And not just for herself, she realized. That letter had been a proxy for Thomas and Lucille as well. 

_We’ve all been pushed down and broken_ , she thought. _No wonder we understand each other so well._

On a sudden spur of need, she strode from the bedroom and down the stairs, feet hollow on the old wood. The first person she found was Lucille, reclined on the chaise in the parlor with a book in her hand. She looked up, saw Edith’s face, understanding lighting in her eyes a moment before their lips came together, Edith’s hands at her jaw.

“You’re angry,” she said when they came apart for breath. “Why?”

“I’m not useless, am I?” Edith said it like a statement as she climbed onto the chaise over her.

“No.” 

“And you want me, don’t you?” _That_ was a question.

“Always.” 

“Show me.” 

Lucille eased her back against the green cushions. Her hairpins dug into her scalp, but it didn’t matter because Lucille’s mouth was on hers again and she felt as though she might devour her..  

Movement in Edith’s periphery distracted her slightly and she looked over -- Lucille moving her lips and teeth to the side of her throat -- to find Thomas standing in the doorway, looking a little startled, perhaps a little unsure. 

“Do you want to…” she managed between breaths and Lucille finally noticed her brother as well, “join?”

He shook his head, smiling fleetingly. “It’s alright.” Edith’s attention was pulled away from him as Lucille nipped at her earlobe. But she saw him remain there out of the corner of her eye, leaning against the frame of the door as he watched silently. 

“We’ll have to take our corsets off,” Lucille said at last. Edith sighed and leaned her head against the arm of the chaise. 

“Just kiss me, then.”

When they both had caught their breath -- lying entwined on the chaise -- she propped herself up on one elbow.

“What was that about?” Lucille’s voice was drowsy. 

“I just wanted to prove something to myself.” Edith glanced over at the doorway. Thomas had gone. Lucille stroked her hair. 

“We’ve told you our stories. What of yours?”

“I had it much better than you did.”

“Even so.”

Edith shook her head. “Eunice was my best friend,” she said at last. “After it became clear I was an Alpha… she didn’t want anything to do with me. She thought I was a predator. And her mother --” She sighed through her nose. “It was hard for a while. For a long time, actually.”

“But we’re here now,” Lucille whispered. Edith’s lips twitched.

“Yes. We’re here.” A brief kiss, soft in comparison to the hard ones of several minutes ago, and then Edith sat up. “Thank you.” She rolled her shoulders back, groaning. 

“You don’t need to thank me.”

“Yes, I do.” 

They shared a smile together and then Lucille stirred, sitting up herself. “I should find Thomas,” she murmured. “Make sure he’s alright.” She hesitated. “Do you mind…?”

“Not at all.” Edith squeezed her hand. In fact, she’d had the same thought. “You go on.” 

Lucille rose and kissed her again and then strode from the room, not before giving her a smile that seemed to light up the entire parlor. And then she was gone. Footsteps echoed down the hallway, satin whispering over the floor. 

* * *

She caught sight of them together a little while later as she went to the bedroom to find her notebook. They were holding each other, Thomas with his back pressed against the wall of the corridor, his cheek against Lucille’s.

“... sure you don’t mind?” Lucille whispered. He nodded, turning his head to kiss her. 

“You startled me, that’s all. But I liked looking at the two of you. You’re so caring…”

Edith smiled to herself and slipped into the bedroom before they could notice her. 

* * *

“Do you ever miss it?” she murmured to Thomas one evening after dinner. They were reclined on the chaise -- the same one from earlier -- as Lucille played the piano in the corner. Thomas looked up at her from where his head leaned against her shoulder. 

“You mean intercourse?” he asked and she nodded. His lips twitched. “ _Yes._ I miss it.” He toyed with her fingers absently. “I don’t remember the majority of my illnesses. And don’t misunderstand me: I still find it uncomfortable. But just… sometimes I miss being that close.” A breath of laughter. “I used to love it once. I still like the idea of it. Being able to slip under someone else’s control for a while… being used.” He looked away from her. “Best thing there was, for a while.” 

“If you ever think that you may want to try again,” Edith said carefully, “I’m willing to help.” Thomas looked back at her, seemed to think for a moment or two, and then nodded very slightly. His lips twitched in a brief, nervous smile.

“I’ll think about it,” he whispered and Edith couldn’t help smiling back in hope. 

“Only if you want to,” she said.

“I’ll think about it,” he repeated. 

“What are you two plotting over there?” asked Lucille without ceasing her playing. Thomas looked over, grinning perhaps a little sheepishly.

“Edith was just telling me that she’s willing to help me regain my old sensibilities,” he said. “Can I count you a part of this too?”

“You know that you can.” Her fingers danced over the black and white keys. Edith thought she recognized Mozart. 

“I know that you miss it,” Thomas said. He turned on the chaise and lay back, placing his head delicately in Edith’s lap. She flashed a wink at him and ran a hand through his hair. “Do you want me to be the way I was?” He sounded uncertain.

“I want,” Lucille said, “you to be comfortable. Besides, Edith is quite enough for me to handle.”

“Oh, _really,_ ” Edith said with a grin. “And what is that supposed to mean?”

“That you’re insatiable and full of surprises.” Lucille struck the final note of the piece with an elegant flourish of her hand. “I enjoy that about you.”

“What about you?” Edith glanced down at Thomas in her lap. She scratched his scalp lightly with her fingertips, liking the quiet purr in his throat at the sensation. “What were you like?” She hesitated. “Or can I ask that?”

“It’s alright. And if you really want to know,” he said, “I was the same way. More so, honestly.” He turned towards her, nestling into the warmth of her body. At the piano, Lucille began another piece. Chopin. “My last year at school, I’m afraid I stopped caring what they thought of me. And honestly it was rather entertaining to tempt them all.”

“What would you do?”

“Nothing that the faculty could consider deliberate attention-seeking,” he said. He grinned, lost in recollection. “They knew what I was doing, of course, but what could they do to stop me? All I’d done was uncross my legs.” He nestled closer to her, putting an arm over his eyes. “If I did it at the right time of month,” he added, “I could make the boy beside me drop his pen.”

“You must have been a menace.”

“Oh, I _was_.” His tone turned more sober suddenly. “It was difficult, you know. The other boys could sneak out and…” He trailed off. “Well. Everyone knew where they went, what they were doing. You could smell it on them. And the faculty, the headmaster, they turned a blind eye because it meant that there’d be less tension.” He snorted. “ _They_ could get relief. I couldn’t. Because _I_ was an embarrassment.”

There was silence in the parlor, except for the slow chords of piano. Edith’s hand rested in his hair.

“I know something akin to that feeling,” she said finally. “I could watch Alan and every other man -- Alpha, that is -- behave the way they wanted. Ask for dances, lead conversations, make invitations… so many things. But if _I_ did them, I’d lose everything.”

“If ever you feel the inclination --” Thomas touched the hand that was not stroking his hair -- “you can ask me to dance anytime.”

The Chopin that Lucille was playing transformed smoothly into a waltz. 

“Go on,” she told Edith, jerking her head at Thomas in her lap. “You’re not shutting me out.” Edith grinned, blew her a kiss, and looked down at her husband. 

“Sir Thomas,” she said, “may I have the honor?”

A flash of white teeth.

“You may, Lady Edith. You may.”

* * *

The snow outside melted three weeks later, leaving the ground a startling shade of blood-red. Thomas explained that it was the clay seeping to the surface that caused the change -- no matter the explanation, Edith did not like to look at it. The color reminded her a little too much of the visitations she’d had.

They didn’t appear to her anymore. Beatrice Sharpe seemed to have given up on her as a lost cause. And, to Edith’s relief, she didn’t seem to have any designs on her children. The household was allowed to grow as peaceful as it wanted. Edith asked once about their father and Lucille had softly explained that he’d died abroad while they were away. No chance of haunting there.

Another week passed and Lucille returned from the post office with a great collection of newspapers in one hand. 

“It’s _The Atlantic_ ,” she said, handing them to Edith in the master bedroom. “The postal system had a couple mishaps with the weather, but they’ve finally gotten the editions with your book to you. Oh, and this,” she added, placing a crisp envelope on top of the newspapers. It was neatly addressed to an Edmund Sharpe. She gave Edith a secret smile. “That’s from an American publisher, no?”

_“What?!”_ Edith snatched up the envelope, slit it open, scanned the contents, and shrieked in triumph. 

They celebrated Edith’s publishing offer with dinner in the dining room and an evening spent passing the newspapers back and forth, reading out loud. Thomas laughed as Edith paused mid-sentence to reach for a pen and cross out several words on the page. 

“What?” she asked, grinning in confusion.

“Nothing, I just thought you would have been satisfied with it by now.”

“No author is _ever_ satisfied with their own work.”

“Not even print?” Lucille asked from where she was perched on the arm of the chaise, looking on with one arm around Edith’s shoulder.

“Especially not in print,” Edith said. “All the problems just come to the surface. Look, here’s another.”

None of them were ready to sleep when they retired. Edith brushed her lips against Lucille’s after she emerged from behind the screen -- she still would not allow them to look at her naked -- and made a _moue_ of surprise and delight when Lucille picked her up and carried her to the bed. She landed there with a _foomph_ of feathers. Quick fingers made short work of the buttons of her nightdress; as Lucille’s lips closed around one nipple, Thomas lay down on the other side of the bed. Edith turned her head to the side and kissed him, doing her best to be gentle. He pulled back quickly, but only to prop his head up with one hand and watch them.  

Lucille kissed her mouth as she pushed up the skirts of her chemise, one hand caressing her delicately. Edith shivered and exhaled into her mouth as she ran her own hands down her spine, over the swell of her buttocks and the backs of her thighs, dropping her lips to Lucille’s throat, then up to her earlobe. Her fingers found Lucille’s bud and she heard her groan: a soft, helpless sound in the back of her throat. 

A quiet sigh and a burst of scent from beside her made her look over again. Thomas lay on his side, face flushed and eyes bright, one hand tracing lazy circles over his chest as he watched them. His erection was visible through his nightshirt, but Edith knew better than to make advances. Instead she reached out her hand to touch his own, her other hand still beneath Lucille’s nightdress. Their fingers laced together and their eyes met: his were dark and she knew that her own were much the same. 

Lucille reached over with her free hand and placed it on theirs, smiling into her kiss with Edith as, to the side, Thomas began to purr. Edith could feel his eyes on them, could hear the rasp of his fingertips on his skin. Lucille’s thighs tightened around her own and she buried her head in Edith’s shoulder, her thumb pressed against Edith’s bud, other fingers stroking within her. Edith’s grip on Thomas’s hand tightened as she, too, came undone. 

She caught Lucille’s hand in her own and took her fingers into her mouth. Lucille was gazing at her and Edith felt that she could fall into the blueness of her eyes. Thomas’s fingers shifted against her own; they were damp with sweat and his skin was like silk against her own.

Lucille pulled her fingers from Edith’s mouth, sitting back between her legs. Thomas rose awkwardly from where he lay against the pillows and tilted his face towards hers. Edith heard them kiss and a faint, wet sound as they came apart. 

“Lucy…” One shaking hand traced over her collarbone and down her sternum to cup her breast. His nose was pressed to her shoulder and Edith caught his scent -- sweet, anticipatory, nervous. The urge to protect rose in her; she sat up and put her arms around him, pressing her cheek to the nape of his neck. He leaned back against her. “I love you both… so much…”

“Do you want to…?” Lucille asked, leaving the offer hanging in the air. Thomas was silent for a while.

“That’s alright,” he said at last. He half-smiled. “I’d rather sleep, honestly.”

Later that night, wedged against Thomas’s back with Lucille’s hand just brushing her waist, Edith found sleep easily. Deep, dreamless, contented. 

* * *

She understood them better now -- them and their habits. So many of her questions were now answered by what they had told her of their lives: why the door to the Rose Room was locked, why Lucille was so protective of Thomas, the reasons for Thomas’s scars. The understanding was hard won and heartbreaking at times, yet she knew she wouldn’t exchange a moment of it for ignorance.

No more secrets. They were free.

* * *

She saw Lucille in the bath the next morning, her hair making a dark pool of the water.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were there --” Edith stepped quickly behind the screen, but Lucille waved her off.

“It’s alright.” Edith tentatively came around to her. Lucille ducked a little deeper into the water and wrapped her arms around her chest. Through the curtain of her hair, Edith saw a great network of scars over her ribs and the side of one breast that her hair couldn’t quite cover. She dropped her gaze quickly. It wasn’t the time to look. 

“I just came to get my dressing gown,” she said. “I left it in here the other day.”

“Over there.” Lucille pointed to the hooks at the far end of the bathroom.

“Thank you.” Edith retrieved her dressing gown and then went quickly for the door.

“You don’t have to go so quickly,” Lucille called, looking over her shoulder. _Pre-Raphaelite_ , Edith thought, not for the first time, and then knelt down beside the bath. “What are your plans for today?”

“I thought I might go to town,” Edith said. “I want to post my reply to the publisher as soon as possible.”

“You’ll be alright?”

“Of course.” 

Water sloshed in the bath as Lucille shifted. 

“Would you get my dressing gown?” she asked. Edith stood and took it from where it had been hanging on the screen. Spreading it wide so she wouldn’t see Lucille when she stood from the bath, she wrapped it around her her shoulders, pressing close enough to her to tie the strings. _There’s so much trust in this,_ she realized suddenly. _She hates her body so much. Getting to be this close… She trusts me enough to do this._

“There.”

“Thank you.” Lucille looked over her shoulder at her. “You’re too good for us, really.”

“Nonsense. We’re exactly what we need.”

* * *

Edith’s plans for the day changed an hour later when she heard the clatter come from upstairs, caught a trace of the now-familiar, heady scent of Thomas’s arousal, and felt an answering pang between her legs. She met Lucille out on the landing and together they hurried upstairs to the workshop in the attic. Thomas sat at his desk, ruler and pencil abandoned, a hand over his mouth. His eyes were fixed on the rafters, his chest rising and falling heavily.

“Thomas.” Lucille knelt in front of him, touching his face. Hanging back, Edith saw his eyes focus on Lucille. “Hello.”

“Get me…” He was having trouble finding his voice. “Get me out of here.”

“It’s alright,” she murmured, helping him to his feet. Edith took his other arm, sighing at the contact, and together they escorted him from the attic and down the flight of stairs that led to the bedrooms. 

Now in the master bedroom, he lay back on the bed and hummed as Edith and Lucille climbed on after him, shedding layers. 

“Why is it,” Edith murmured as she bent down to kiss him, “that every time one of us makes plans to go to the post office, _this_ happens?” Thomas laughed quietly.

“I don’t know. _Ah_ \--” Lucille was making short work of his clothes, kissing every inch of him she could find. Edith unpinned her hair and pressed against her corset to loosen the clasps. It landed silently on the carpet and Edith laughed as Thomas pulled her onto himself, hands on the backs of her thighs. Lucille was behind her, lips were on the side of her neck, dragging over her shoulder and down her back through her chemise, reaching around her to pull the strings of it loose. Edith pulled it off and tossed it over the side of the bed, groaning as Thomas licked a stripe over one nipple. 

“God --”

Lucille left Edith and went to Thomas, bringing their open mouths together as Edith’s hand found his erection. His eyes slid shut. Their pulses hammered in her ears. 

“Please --” He touched her hip with one shaking hand. “Please, I want to --”

She knew without having to be told and nudged his cock between her thighs. 

“Yes?” Her hands carded through his hair.

“Yes. Now.”

She sank down and took him. 

* * *

“Edith -- !”

It was some hours later. Edith trailed her tongue over Lucille’s folds one last time as, behind her, Thomas rolled his hips forward. She caught her breath as he slipped inside her again. His own breath sounded labored in her ear, his chin resting on her shoulder. She wanted to wipe her mouth but it was difficult to keep her balance where she rocked back and forth. In the end she settled for licking her lips, savoring Lucille’s taste. Lucille put her hands on her shoulders and used her as a crutch to sit up and kiss Thomas, tucking her chemise over herself again. Edith heard him moan, his rhythm faltering. 

A slamming sound at the door of the house made them all jump. They exchanged looks of panic and Edith was suddenly aware of Thomas shaking, still buried in her. 

Lucille stood unsteadily and went to the wardrobe for her dressing gown. “I’ll go.”

“Lucille --” Edith protested, but she was already wrapping it around herself. 

“It’s alright. You go on.”

Once the bedroom door closed behind her, Edith disentangled herself from Thomas and turned to face him. He was white-faced, shaking. She touched his cheek.

“It’s going to be just fine,” she whispered. “It’ll be alright.” She lay back against the pillows and pulled him close, wrapping her legs around his hips as he sheathed himself in her again. Their rhythm was unusually quick and she could hear his heart pounding. “Just fine…” She stroked one hand over his back in attempt to soothe him, the other moving between her legs. Thomas’s hair was damp with sweat where his head rested against her cheek, his eyes closed as he thrust forward again. She pressed her lips together, fighting a moan. God only knew who was at the door --

Her climax was sudden and deep from her core. A high-pitched whimper sounded in Thomas’s throat as she clenched around him and then he, too, fell apart, his head dropping between her breasts. He was trembling, his scent anxious. His heart was racing. Edith wrapped an arm around him and stroked his hair, for her own benefit as much as his. She didn’t feel particularly calm either.

“Shh… it’ll be just fine… Nothing’s going to happen to us…” A quick rap on the door and Lucille hurried inside, closing the door behind them. “Who was it, Lucille?”

“It’s Doctor McMichael,” she said in a rush. “He’s at the door. I don’t know why. But he’s insisting that he speak with us.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more after this. I am very sorry.
> 
> I recommend listening to "My Edward and I" by Dario Marianelli and "Combe Magna" by Patrick Doyle as accompaniment for this chapter.

“Alan?” Edith sat up, taking a boneless Thomas with her. “What’s he doing -- didn’t you tell him we were indisposed?”

“I tried!” Lucille hissed. “He wouldn’t leave. He wants an audience with us for some reason.”

Edith gritted her teeth and covered her eyes.

“Give me a dressing gown, would you?” she asked, agitated. Lucille tossed one of Thomas’s indigo one to her, giving another to her brother. Edith struggled into her chemise and threw the dressing gown over it. Lucille was helping Thomas into his trousers. 

“He’ll smell it on us,” Thomas muttered. “He’ll know…”

“We just have to take that risk,” she told him. “Just hold onto me. It’ll be alright.”

They made a bizarre picture as they picked their way carefully down the staircase: all of them in their dressing gowns, Edith and Lucille supporting a weak-kneed and flushed Thomas between them. Alan certainly seemed to think so; he started as they appeared at the foot of the stairs. He looked out of place to Edith’s eyes, wrapped in a wool coat, hat under his arm and muffler in his hands. Edith bit back her sudden anger. Her two worlds were colliding and, in her heightened state, she found it nearly unbearable. 

“Doctor McMichael,” Thomas managed. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t shake hands.”

“Edith, how are you?” Alan said, not bothering to reply. 

“Alan,” Edith said, “what are you doing here?” They’d been friends long enough that Alan was able to hear the tone of what she’d not said in her voice: _there had better be a good reason for this._

“Forgive any interruption,” he said to her with a distracted glance at Thomas, “but there’s -- there’s something I think you need to --”

“You couldn’t have written?” Edith interrupted. It was rude, she knew, but she couldn’t help it. Thomas’s scent was inescapable and she could feel the effects as if there were a hand beneath her skirts. Alan sensed it, too. He reached out to touch her shoulders and then quickly flinched back. 

“I had to come immediately.” Alan swallowed. “Listen, are you --” 

“Is this something between yourself and Edith?” Lucille broke in. “I’m afraid my brother is unwell. He needs rest.”

“I’m afraid I must ask you to stay.” 

“Alan, what’s going on?” Edith snapped, losing her patience. Thomas was breathing rather hard beside her. Her tone softened. “Look, why don’t we take this into the parlor?” Like some odd parade, they shuffled inside. “Here.” She and Lucille sat Thomas down on the chaise and then took their places on either side of him. 

“Won’t you sit down, Doctor?” Lucille asked. Alan’s jaw tightened.

“I’d prefer to stand, thank you.” 

“Alan, will you _please_ tell me what this about?” Edith asked. Alan sighed. 

“This isn’t easy to -- Edith, I’m afraid --” He stopped again and turned away, pacing his hands over his face, reddened by the cold and perhaps the unmistakable scent of lust that hung about the room. He sighed again. “Are you quite well?”

“Alan.”

“You didn’t reply for months,” he said. “I was worried that something -- that something had happened.”

“You came all this way to ask if I was alright?” Edith stared. In her mix of adrenaline and arousal, her thoughts were running a mile a minute: how dare he think she couldn’t handle herself? _He’s in love with you,_ she reminded herself. _Wouldn’t you do the same thing for Thomas or Lucille --_ but he was speaking again.

“No, Edith, it’s not that. It’s --” He broke off for a moment, gazing at all of them uncomfortably. Edith realized that Thomas had buried his head in her shoulder, his breathing labored and audible in the deadly silent room. “The Sharpes are not who they say they are,” Alan said finally. 

“Excuse me?” Edith stared at him blankly. Thomas removed his head from her shoulder. “Alan, look me in the eye and say what you mean.”

Alan met her gaze, looking miserable. “Sir Thomas has married you under false pretenses.” 

Frowning in disbelief, she looked at Thomas and Lucille. Lucille’s face was a blank. But Thomas’s flush was disappearing as the blood drained from his face. 

“What pretenses _,_ ” she asked cautiously, “is he meant to have married me under? I think it should be fairly clear to you that we _all know who we are_ , if that’s what you mean.”

“No. That’s not what I mean.” Alan placed his hat and muffler on a nearby chair. He took a deep breath. “Sir Thomas is already married.”

There was dead silence. Edith looked from Alan to the two beside her. Lucille’s hand had tightened around Thomas’s wrist, her other hand stroking his palm. Light circles. Trying to comfort him. She wanted to touch him. She could smell how he wanted her to, also. But confusion made her hold back; confusion and something else, something odd about how they were behaving...

“How -- how could he be already married?” Edith managed at last. “There was never any legal trouble… there’s no one… how… Where are you getting your information, Alan?” 

Alan pulled a set of papers from his coat pocket and immediately Edith stood to take them from him. There was a newspaper clipping on top. Alan was speaking to her, but she didn’t hear a word. 

_“Shocking Savage Murder At Allerdale Hall,”_ she read out loud. “I’m sorry -- Alan -- what is this?” She showed the clipping to him.

“Edith.” Lucille was white-faced where she sat beside Thomas. “Edith, please don’t.” 

“Lucille?”

“Please don’t read it. I’m begging you.” Tears were glimmering in her eyes. Edith stared at her. 

“I don’t understand -- how -- are you… are you trying to keep something from me?” She couldn’t keep the hurt from her voice. “What do you… how can you keep me from…” The desperation in Lucille’s face was as heartbreaking as it was disturbing. “What’s -- what’s happening? I don’t understand.”

“Please, Edith…”

It was impossible to look at her and refuse, so Edith turned her back to the siblings before she began to read. 

_“The body of Lady Beatrice Sharpe was found yesterday in the bathroom of Allerdale Hall, a knife driven cruelly into her forehead._ ” 

“Oh god,” Thomas moaned behind her. 

“... _police have arrested no suspects as yet. The house was empty at the time of death.”_ Edith looked up at Alan. “I knew all of this already.”

“This was my next point,” Alan said grimly. “The article isn’t entirely accurate. According to police records, the only ones in the house at the time were Thomas and Lucille Sharpe.”

Edith looked back at them.

“But you told me it happened while you were away,” she said in confusion. 

“We _lied_ , alright?!” Lucille snapped. She was shaking where she sat beside Thomas. “We lied to you because we didn’t want you to know the truth!”

“Which is?” Deep down, Edith already knew.

_“That I killed her!”_ Lucille’s shriek echoed off the walls of the parlor. Thomas buried his head in his hands. “She’d found out about us. I knew she’d kill us if she had the chance. And I couldn’t let her hurt him!” A tear trickled down her cheek unchecked. 

“There were only so many explanations,” Alan cut in. “The police sent Sir Thomas to boarding school. As for Miss Sharpe, the records say a finishing school in Switzerland, but I suspect a different institution --”

“ _No.”_ Lucille was shaking. “No. You don’t get to talk about that. It’s not your story to tell.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me?” Edith bunched the papers in her hands. 

“Because we wanted you to think we were _good!_ ” Thomas broke in. His voice was high-pitched, panicked. Tears pricked at Edith’s eyes. 

“What about everything else? What about your father? Did he really die abroad?” _Please say yes. Please tell me this is a nightmare and that I’ll wake up._ But Lucille merely looked sick. 

“No,” she said. 

“Him _too?”_

“He was choking him, I had to do something!” Lucille buried her head in her hands and then came up. “We all hated him. It went unreported.”

“And the bigamy?” She didn’t want to know. She _didn’t_ want to know. But the truth had to be had. 

“If you look through the papers,” Alan said gently, “you’ll find marriage certificates.” Wiping away tears, Edith sifted through the police records, court orders, and education certificates until she found them.

“ _Pamela Upton, Amelia Mcdermott, Enola Sciotti_ ,” she read. “I don’t -- where are they now? What have you…” She trailed off. “The other ghosts,” she breathed. She closed her eyes. “Oh my god. God help me. It wasn’t just her. It was them… What was it _for?_ ” She stopped short. “Oh god. Oh god, no.” Her voice broke into a sob. “ _Tell_ me it wasn’t for the money!”

Lucille dropped her gaze. Tears streamed silently down Thomas’s face.

“I’m sorry, Edith,” he managed. Edith shook her head, staring at him with large, disbelieving eyes. Heat burst suddenly in her belly, like the lust she even now still felt, but darker, hateful, and even stronger. She took a step forward and Thomas shrank back against the chaise, unbridled fear in his eyes. 

“ _You…_ ” 

Alan grabbed her shoulders and pulled her back just as she lashed out for Thomas with a shriek. Lucille flew to her feet and forced herself between Edith and Thomas, a growl sounding at the back of her throat. She grabbed her hand, but Edith pushed her away. “Don’t _touch_ me!” She fell back against Alan’s chest. “Is that what you did?!” she sobbed. “Travel around the world, find some sad, lonely woman who feels like she doesn’t belong, give everything she wants, and then take it from her? _Is that what you did?!_ ”

“ _No!”_ Thomas tried to stand, but his legs buckled and he fell back, bloodless. Lucille knelt beside him and cradled him close. 

“You were the only Alpha!” she insisted, her words tripping over each other. “And we were never going to kill you!”

“How can I believe you?” Edith snarled. Alan wrapped his arms around her, less as means of comfort and more to keep her from flying at them.

“In Italy,” Thomas said quickly. “We decided it in Italy.”

“Because I was Carter Cushing’s daughter and you already had the funding promised to you, is that why?”

_“Because I loved you, Edith!”_ Thomas cried. “ _Because I loved you and I still do!”_

“ _Liar!”_

Thomas buried his head in Lucille’s shoulder and burst into fresh tears. Edith’s mind was racing.

“The berries,” she said feverishly. “You _did_ poison me. I only got ill after you put them in my tea. After --” After she’d told them about the ghosts. She remembered that night. Thomas slipping back into bed beside her. His tears. His desperate _I love you’_ s. “Oh god. That’s when you decided it. God help me.” She hid her face in Alan’s shoulder and wept. “You couldn’t let me find out what you’d done.”

“We never wanted to,” Lucille said hoarsely. “And it’s over. We stopped.”

“But only after _I_ stopped.” Edith looked back at her, hot tears trickling down her cheeks and off her chin onto the dressing gown. “You would have killed me even after everything we had. I can’t believe you. I can’t…” She shook her head. “I was in love with you.” _I_ am _in love with you_ , she thought. _God help me._ But there was no way for Lucille or Thomas to hear her thoughts and she watched both their faces crumble. “Is there anything else I should know, Alan?” she asked, her voice nothing but a whisper. 

“No,” Alan said at last. “No. That’s all.” There was silence in the room, save for their sobs. “I’m sorry, Edith. I’m so sorry.” After a pause, he spoke again, this time in an undertone. “I’m taking you away from here.”

“What about them?” she asked thickly.

“What do you want to do?” Alan asked. 

_I want to punish them._

_I want to help them._

_I want to kiss them blind._

_I want to see their hearts break_. A part of her knew that she just had. 

She sniffed and tried to stand on her own, but caught Alan’s arm. 

“I’m going,” she said. Her heart howled. 

“Her cousin made the decision that you would not be turned in,” Alan said, “but you will not receive the money from --

“No,” Edith interrupted. She closed her eyes, trying to gather her senses. “You can have your funding. I won’t turn you in. But only on the condition that you don’t --” She faltered - “that you don’t do this again. Stay here. Live quietly. Try to heal.” Those last words were the softest whisper. 

“You trust them?” Alan murmured to her. Edith blinked back fresh tears.

“I shouldn’t,” she whispered. 

“Edith, _please_.” Lucille’s breathing was ragged as she spoke. “Don’t do this to us. You’ve helped us so much. You can’t --”

“You know that I can.” 

She nodded wearily, clutching her brother close. Edith could hear Thomas’s sobbing, his small hiccups for air. It was the crying of a child, helpless and heartbroken. Every cell in her body screamed to help him. 

Her head and her heart were not in agreement.

She broke free of Alan’s arms. 

“I’m going to pack,” she said. 

“No, no, no, nonononono --” Thomas was hyperventilating, rocking back and forth against his sister. He was sweating through his dressing gown, his face blotched from crying. Edith could smell his panic and, beneath that, the terrible sweetness of his cycle. 

“Thomas, please -- just look at me -- shhh…” The sound of Lucille trying to soothe him followed Edith into the hall.

She didn’t make it five feet before her legs gave out and she slumped against the wall and sank to the floor. Her sobs rose in her throat, reverberating around the house. In the parlor several feet away, she could hear Thomas weeping, his gasps for air. Lucille was murmuring to him, but Edith couldn’t make out what she was saying. She half-wished she would come to her and do the same. 

But she couldn’t want that anymore. They’d _hurt_ her. They’d planned -- whether they’d wanted to or not -- for her to die. 

Footsteps sounded beside her and she looked up miserably to see Alan standing there. He sat down at her side.

“I’m so sorry.”

“I can’t believe it… I don’t _want_ to believe it.” But everything made sense when she thought about it. Alan put an arm around her and she didn’t hesitate to lean into him. “How did you… how did you find out…”

“Your cousin,” Alan murmured. “He’d been in England around the time Lady Beatrice -- around the time she died. He read about it. And when he learned that you’d married Sir Thomas, he remembered something about the Sharpes. There’s a man called Holly -- an investigator that he hired. It didn’t take long to uncover the truth.” Edith leaned her head back against his arm, numb. “And when you never replied to my letter… I got worried. So did your cousin. So I came.” A long pause. “Edith, I didn’t realize how deeply you felt… everything between you… I’m sorry.”

“I just can’t believe it… I thought they loved me…” _They_ do _love me,_ she added privately. “I have to… I have to pack…” Alan helped her up. 

“Do you want me to come with you?”

“No. Let me do this on my own.”

With heavy steps, she made her way upstairs to the master bedroom. That beautiful master bedroom. The scent of them all was still so strong. In her state, she felt as though it were mocking her. _You thought you could have something good in your life? Think again. You’re nothing._

_You’re useless._

_No one could want you for what you are. There must always be an ulterior motive._

She opened the wardrobe and began sorting through her frocks. Nightdresses, day dresses, her proper dressing gown. The violet frock that Eunice had loved -- funny, she’d never gotten a chance to wear it. Her wedding dress, tucked at the back. Tears pricked at her eyes as she ran a hand over the smooth, ivory silk. And in that, a moment of clarity.

_This is what Mamma was warning me of._

She buried her head in the folds of the gown and wept, shoulders shaking. Her grief, usually a dull ache tucked at the back of her heart, suddenly came flooding to the forefront. For the first time in years, she wanted her mother back. 

_Just tell me it’s going to be alright. Just tell me that. Sing me a lullaby and make it all better._

She half-expected a response. But nothing. Ghosts, it seemed, didn’t travel. 

What was the point of being able to see them if they wouldn’t come to you when you needed them?

“Mamma…” she whispered to the dress, tears soaking into the fabric. “You were right. I’m so sorry. I’m so _sorry…_ ” 

She turned away from the wardrobe to find Lucille and Thomas standing in the doorway, white-faced and quiet. Thomas was leaning against her, his eyes empty, dead. 

There was utter silence. 

“Edith,” Lucille said at last, her voice cracking. “Thomas needs to lie down.” Edith nodded numbly and moved her suitcase from the center of the bed. Tentatively, as if Edith were a bird that might fly away at any moment, Lucille helped Thomas to the bed and then pulled sheets over him once he’d laid down. Edith watched her stroke the hair from his face. 

“Why won’t good things happen to us?” Thomas whispered to his sister.

“I don’t know, my darling. I don’t know.”

Edith had turn away after that. She felt ill. On a sudden decision, she began hanging up the clothes from her trousseau again -- she didn’t want them. She would go back to Buffalo and just be Edith Cushing. Would they get an annulment? Could any of them bear that? But could she bear being tethered to them for the rest of her life? And them to her? 

“You really are leaving.” Edith looked back to find that Lucille was gazing at her from where she sat at Thomas’s side.

“Did you expect me to do otherwise?” Edith’s voice was rough from crying. 

“No,” Lucille confessed. “You have every right.”

Edith closed her suitcase with a snap that sounded too loud in the deafening quiet of the bedroom. Thomas was turned away from her, Lucille holding his hand. She was tracing circles on his palm again. Just a few months before, Edith had done the same one evening. How long ago it seemed. And she’d never known… never once suspected...

“Why do I still love you?” Edith asked softly. 

“I don’t know,” Lucille whispered. “Anymore than I know I why I fell in love with you in the first place.”

Edith sighed, feeling fresh tears prick into her eyes. Surely she’d drained herself by now…

“I wish I could go back in time. Back to Buffalo,” Edith whispered. “I wish I could go back and my father would be there and I’d be the girl I was back then. I’d be scared and lonely and misunderstood. But at least I would never have known you.”

“Edith…” Lucille stood and went around the bed to her, but Edith seized the letter opener from the table nearby and held it out.

“Don’t come near me.”

Lucille sighed, pain showing in her face. 

“Do you really think I would harm you?”

“I don’t _know!”_ Edith cried. “That’s the problem, Lucy. That’s why I have to leave. How can I live with people I can’t trust?”

“What can I do to _make_ you trust us?” 

“ _Nothing!”_ Edith threw herself into the armchair and wiped at her eyes. “Can’t you understand that nothing is going to fix this?”

“I know.” Lucille’s voice was strangled in her throat. “I know that.” She sighed. “I wish we were dead,” she whispered. 

“Don’t.” Edith shook her head. “Don’t say that, please.”

“Why shouldn’t I?” Lucille asked. There was no challenge in her voice. Just hopelessness. “If you leave, the sun goes out. We’ve been dead for _years_ , Edith. Caged in these rotting walls. You brought us back. I think for the first time in my life, I felt like a person. Because of you.”

“ _Don’t,”_ Edith said through gritted teeth. “I can’t help you now. I _can’t_.”

“I love you so much, Edith. We _both_ love you.”

Edith rose and seized her suitcase, hurrying past Lucille for the door.

“I wish I’d never met you,” she said. And fled. 

*

Alan met her at the bottom of the stairs, his muffler and hat in hand. 

“I have a horse,” he said. “We can leave now and perhaps still make it to town before evening.”

“Leave…” Edith looked back up the stairs at the landing. The house groaned as the wind whistled through it. Hadn’t the thought always been in her mind? The house had felt as it though it were choking her at times, crushing the air out of her. But she’d always imagined leaving with Lucille and Thomas at her side. Going off, finding some property in another country -- Spain or France, perhaps. Or just getting an apartment in Paris. _Something_. But they would have done it together. They were _meant_ to.

Leave. Now, as she stared around the cavernous great hall, she found that she didn’t want to. 

“Edith?” Alan put a hand on her shoulder. She hardly felt it.

_I’ll never see them again_ , she thought. _This is the last moment._

Her heart began to thump wildly in her ribcage as if trying to beat itself from her body so it could stay where it was meant to be. She half-considered throwing down her suitcase and running back upstairs for one more embrace. She thought of Thomas, trembling beneath the bedclothes. What would happen to him? Would he heal from this or would it become yet another scar around his neck? 

Or would Lucille not reach him in time.

She looked back down at her suitcase.

“My manuscript,” she muttered. “I don’t have -- I need my manuscript…”

Before Alan could stop her, her footsteps clattered upstairs yet again.

Lucille turned quickly from the closed bedroom door as Edith reached the landing.

“I thought you were going,” she said. The hope in her voice tore at Edith’s chest. 

“I am,” she said. “I left my book.”

Lucille turned back to the door and unlocked it, clearly blinking back tears. Edith swallowed hard as she pushed inside. She would _not_ look at him. He was nothing more than a blur in her periphery as she strode quickly to the desk by the window, found her papers and the letter, and bundled them into her arms. Turned back.

She couldn’t go another foot without at least looking. 

He was sleeping on his stomach the way a child might, his breath shallow and uneven. The curve of his cheek that his hair couldn’t hide was still flushed. That flush and the sweetness of his scent drew her closer until she stood at the side of the bed. And since she was so close, she couldn’t hold back from touching him.

Her lips brushed his temple -- once, as lightly as she could manage. But he stirred anyway, his eyes opening and then widening.

“Edith --” Before she could find the strength to pull away, he pulled her close, kissing her on the mouth desperately. His hands slid over her back, down the backs of her thighs. Her nipples were hardening already, the familiar pang between her legs begging her to climb beneath the covers one final time. 

She pulled away at last. “I can’t.”

“You really are going?” He pawed at her shoulder and neck like a lapdog. His eyes were filling with tears.“You’re really leaving us…”

“I…” She backed away, breaking free of his caresses at last. “I love you so much…”

Lucille was standing by the open door when she left. Thomas was still asking for her, begging for her to reconsider. To wait, at least. 

_This is the end. I may have just killed him. God only knows. And I’ll never know._

Her legs could no longer support her weight and it was Lucille who caught her and helped her to her feet. Quickly, before either of them could think better of it, Lucille pressed her lips to Edith’s. There was no lingering. Just final contact. When they pulled apart, Lucille was staring at her with those eyes that Edith had once believed she could read…

One night, countless years ago, Edith stayed up late reading _Hamlet_ with her mother. The quote that had fascinated her at the time.

“ _That one may smile and smile and be a villain.”_

She’d thought she’d understood at the time. But the meaning came again now, sharper this time.

“Do you what you have to do,” Lucille whispered and stood to slip silently into the master bedroom, shutting the door behind her. Edith heard the click of the lock. She couldn’t seem to move. 

Surely they would open the door again. Surely Lucille would look at her in that way that Edith found so captivating, or Thomas would whisper her name and reach out with one trembling, desperate hand.

Surely they wouldn’t just let her go.

A minute passed, then two. Edith thought she heard a muffled moan from beyond the closed door. Or perhaps it had been a sob?

Either way, they weren’t inviting her in. They were giving her their blessing to leave them. 

But what if she didn’t want to. 

Movement further down the corridor caught Edith’s attention. For the first time in weeks, she saw one of the apparitions floating there in front of the staircase that led to the third level. It was the scarlet one with the strangely lovely hair, with its death’s-head grin beneath horrified, grieving eyes. Empty and alone.

They regarded each other for a long moment.

_This is what they do,_ Edith thought. _This is what I love._

She slowly turned and made her way downstairs, leaving the specter as she passed the portraits of long-dead ancestors and the doors leading to the other beautiful rooms -- she hadn’t even seen some of them yet. What would she do? Where could she go? Buffalo wasn’t home, just the place she’d used to live. There would be talk. Divorce was frowned upon. As for leaving one’s husband without bothering to divorce… her place in society would be even worse than it was before. 

“You’re ready?” Alan asked as she met him at the foot of the stairs. She nodded and felt her heart fragment. “Come on, then. I took a buggy here… ” Edith nodded and allowed Alan to help her with her luggage. She took his arm, letting him take her to the great doors before them. 

It was snowing again: flakes swirling through the air without seeming to ever meet the frozen ground. Thomas’s harvester loomed in Edith’s periphery like a mountain of iron and steel. 

Her feet came to a stop and she looked over her shoulder at the great hall. All was silent. The fire in the hearth was little more than glowing embers. Somewhere within, Thomas and Lucille were holding each other. And she was not there to join them. 

She never would be again. 

The long-haired specter reappeared on the landing of the staircase, gazing down at her. A macabre yet heartfelt farewell. Edith drank her in for as long as she could until she felt Alan’s hand on her shoulder.

“Edith?”

She turned away, tried and failed to smile, and allow Alan to lead her to where the horse was tethered. With all her might, she held the image of the specter in her mind. 

Somehow she knew that it would be the last spirit she ever saw. 


	10. Nepenthe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter, you guys!
> 
> I want to give a HUGE thank-you to mjolnir-s-master, with whom I first got this crazy idea. You've been a wonderful well of support and getting your keysmashes in the Tumblr messaging system after I post new chapters tends to be the highlight of my day. You are fantastic. 
> 
> If you like reading and listening to music, I suggest Confluence by John Williams. That track was major inspiration for this final chapter.

_Nepenthe: A medicine for sorrow, a means to forget suffering._

* * *

 It was dark when they reached the village, the wheels of the buggy sticking a little in the wet mud that served as a road. The postmaster and his wife were there to greet them; their eyebrows lifted when they saw Edith descend, wrapped in Alan’s coat, a man’s dressing gown, and beneath that her thin chemise. Her loose curls blew around her face in the freezing wind.

“Alan…” She wrapped a hand around her friend’s arm, looking over her shoulder back the way they’d come. The house was entirely invisible, hidden by the hills. She turned away, suddenly weak and silently appreciating the arm he put around her. 

“Lady Sharpe, to what do we owe the pleasure?” the postmaster asked. Edith felt a sudden wave of nausea. Her legs wobbled beneath her. “Lady Sharpe?” 

“We need rooms for the night,” said Alan, tightening his arm so she wouldn’t collapse in front of them. She looked back to where the house should have been. They were there. She could still feel Thomas’s presence somehow, registering as dizziness, something that felt like a weight in her chest, and, of _course_ , the desire that still swept through her veins. Even now she would not be granted a reprieve.

“I’m afraid we’ve just the one,” said the postmaster. “We could --”

“Then give that one to Edith. I’ll find a place.”

The postmaster’s wife made a look of mild reproach at Alan’s familiarity. Edith was barely aware of it.  Were they alright? Did they hate her now?

She wanted to go back already, but she’d already made her decision. _Bed and lie in it._

Alan and the postmaster were making some sort of negotiation; Edith couldn’t make herself care what they were saying. Her stomach was roiling too much.

Her face cooled suddenly, prickling, as all the blood drained from her face. The postmaster’s wife lunged forward with an alarmed _madam?_ and Alan caught her just before she slumped to the ground. As if from very far away, she heard him say _be careful, she’s not well_ as she rolled into someone else’s arms. There was a soft intake of breath above her, as if startled. 

And then she was being carried over the steps of the depot, jolting slightly with every step taken. Above her the ceiling passed blurrily. She felt as though she were flying through space, borne on a breeze that would make all the decisions for her. She didn’t mind.

Gentle hands took her coat from her, laid her on a bed, and pulled the covers over her. Warmth at last. 

“Thomas…” She seized one of the hands, clinging there. But it wasn’t right: the skin was too rough to be his...

“My name is Rachel,” said a woman’s voice, rather unsteadily. The postmaster’s wife. “You lie quietly now, my lady.”

Gradually Edith’s vision came into focus. A kind-faced, middle-aged woman was bent over her, brow knit in concern. She was flushed. 

“I don’t… I don’t feel well…” Edith murmured. She reached beneath the sheets and pressed a hand to her belly. 

“Will you need a basin, madam?” asked Rachel. Edith nodded after a long moment spent trying to process what she’d said. 

“Thank you.”

She might have drifted to sleep. The next time she opened her eyes, Rachel had placed a bowl by the bed and was standing beside her.

“Anything more you need, madam?” She was gazing at her with some bemusement and not a little embarrassment -- Edith couldn’t guess why. She shook her head and her stomach turned. She turned to the side and gagged into the basin by the bed. Immediately Rachel caught her shoulders and held her steady. The remains of breakfast slopped into the bowl. 

Edith fell back on the bed, staring miserably up at the ceiling. She felt so heavy… Could it really have been just a day since she’d seen Lucille bathing and Thomas’s cycle had begun again?

“It’s alright, madam.” There was a look of curiosity in Rachel’s eyes, but when Edith met her gaze, she was quick to look away. Edith couldn’t begin to imagine how many questions she must have. What was Lady Edith Sharpe doing traveling from the house with a strange American man? In a state of undress, no less.

“You must think the worst of me,” she whispered.

“I think nothing, madam.” She paused. “Madam, is everything entirely… alright?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you’re --” She flushed again. “I’m merely confused… why you… well…” She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial tone, woman to woman. “Your scent, madam… it’s not…” Rachel placed a delicate hand on her shoulder. “Do you need to confide in someone?”

Edith blinked, uncomprehending. “What do you mean?” Rachel glanced around and lowered her voice even further.

“If you’ve left at an… unfortunate time…” She gazed at her meaningfully. “If you’re under the weather, you’re welcome to stay until it passes --”

“I’m not ill!” Edith protested. 

“But you… forgive me, madam, but you don’t… you smell like your husband would when…” Edith pushed her hand from her shoulder.

“Can you not tell what I am?” she asked. “Have I learned to camouflage myself so well?”

“Madam?” Rachel looked confused, almost frightened by her outburst. She’d taken a step back. 

“I don’t want to _pretend_ anymore!” Her voice reverberated off the walls. 

“Edith?”

Edith looked up to see Alan standing in the doorway. She turned away and covered her eyes.

“I’ve been living half a life,” she whispered to herself. Alan’s footsteps sounded on the wood.

“You can leave,” he told Rachel.

“But, sir --”

“You may keep the door open if it would set your mind at ease.”

Retreating footsteps. The creak of a door. Alan sat beside her on the bed and tentatively touched her shoulder. 

“Please don’t.” 

“Edith --”

“Just leave me be.”

“Not until I know that you’re alright.” Silence. “It’s not her fault, Edith. She’s an Omega, she can’t… _tell…_ as easily. Their sense of smell isn’t as strong as --”

“You think I don’t know that?” she snapped.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have…” Alan trailed away. “It’ll be alright,” he said finally. “We’ll go back home. The house is still in the family name so you still have a place to go.” He forced a smile. “You can write. You could do whatever you wanted.” 

She looked at him as tears streamed silently down her face. “I’ve never been able to do that,” she said. “Not in Buffalo.”

“Things will be different this time.”

“Do you really think so? You really believe I could just _go back?”_ She shook her head. “You don’t understand just how that world constricts you. I would return to how things were before without even meaning to. Just trying to muddle through and not draw attention to myself. Do you think that I could ever go back after what I’ve had?” 

“Edith,” Alan began, but Edith went on.

“You don’t understand. You’re my best friend, but you don’t understand what all this means for me. It’s the end of the dream.” She lay back against the pillows. “I almost _want_ to go back to them.”

“Edith --”

“The freedom there, Alan. I never thought I could have something like that.”

“Edith, what they did…”

“Just go.”

“Edith --”

“Leave me, Alan.”

A long silence. Then the bed creaked a little as Alan stood. Footsteps on the floor. Silence. She looked up to find him standing on the threshold, one hand on the doorknob. 

“You’re my oldest friend, Edith,” he said. “Whatever happens… I want you to be happy.”

The door shut behind him with a clunk. Edith fell back against the pillows and covered her face with her hands. 

She could not escape her memory. Everywhere she felt odd moments from the last few months creeping in on her. Meeting them for the first time at the McMichael gathering -- how long ago… and just a little over a month later, they’d married. Strange. Until now she hadn’t realized just how fast it all had been. She remembered saying goodbye to her father at the station, him waving goodbye to her as the train pulled away. Thomas and her sleeping beside each other. His terror when she tried to touch him that night. And how pointless her conflict between the two of them seemed now. 

She brushed her fingertips over her lips, eyes closed, and remembered that kiss in the park when Thomas had first asked her to marry him. And the kiss months later with Lucille in the kitchen, Thomas slumbering upstairs. _I can’t do this anymore,_ Lucille had said. Only now did she realize what she’d meant. Strange, the way the heart worked -- somehow she’d deluded herself into thinking that she knew them both when they’d lied to her this entire time, told her so little. 

She was in love, but what did that mean anymore?

She lusted for them, but what did that matter?

Lust. 

She still felt it. Pulsing in her belly and other, lower places. Despite her scant clothing, sweat glistened on her skin. Were things different, she might have slipped a hand under her skirt and relieved the ache herself -- but she simply didn’t have the energy or any real desire for it. It was only worth it if someone else was there to share it with her.

Snow drifted past her window. Sighing, she rolled onto her side, closed her eyes, and let her exhaustion pull her under. Her dream was vague, but she had the faint impression she was holding somebody’s hand and that they were leading her through the steps of a waltz. She was young again, a child, and the scent of orchids filled the room...

Night had fallen when she opened her eyes again, the tiny bedroom cast in mostly shadow. Moonlight made a pale puddle at the foot of her bed. Groaning, she sat up and stretched her arms above her head, rolling her stiff shoulders. Her cheeks were wet. _I must have been crying in my sleep,_ she thought, wiping at her eyes.

The silence seemed oppressive, as did the closeness of the walls around her and the unfamiliar, worn-thin quality of the sheets. She was, she realized, accustomed to hearing two pairs of lungs breathing on either side of her. The absence of that familiar susurrus jarred her. 

Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, she reached for Alan’s coat where it had been abandoned on the floor, and carefully slipped out the door, wrapping the coat around herself. 

Alan was sleeping on the floor outside her door, his breathing surprisingly deep and even in the otherwise-silent corridor. _He must have traveled without stopping_ , she thought. Moving slowly so she wouldn’t wake him, she edged past and found the main entrance. 

Snow crunched under her boots, moonlight reflecting off the ice and casting a blue-white glow over everything, a strange, alien world where nothing was quite as it should have been. The hill where Allerdale rested could just be seen in the distance; the snow seemed to have been absorbed by the clay, staining the entire peak a bloody red. In this light, it looked almost black.

_How have they survived there?_ she wondered. _And how_ will _they?_ She suddenly remembered the ghost of Lady Beatrice, still creeping throughout the halls with Lucille’s knife buried in her head to the hilt. _What if she begins her old habits again and torments them in death as well?_

_Their entire lives have been varying amounts of pain._

She closed her eyes and saw Thomas lying in bed, clinging to Lucille. _Why won’t good things happen to us? I don’t know, I don’t know._

But she couldn’t let herself worry about them now. That chapter was completed and she would have to start another one. Perhaps she could travel for a few years, keep writing. There was, after all, no real need to stay in Buffalo. And surely there were other Omega men. Or perhaps she would meet a like-minded woman and they could live out the years together. Perhaps… Her treacherous mind provided her with the flaw: _it would never be the same because, no matter how hard I try, they’ll never leave my mind or my --_

Footsteps on the path. She drew beneath the eaves of the building, into the shadows. The last thing she wanted was to be noticed.

Her heart leapt into her mouth as two figures picked their way down the muddy path towards where she stood. 

Two figures. 

It could mean nothing. It _was_ nothing.

But they came from the right direction -- from the hills in the distance -- and they were tall, dark, one leaning their head against the other’s shoulder, suitcases in their hands. She could hear a faint murmuring of encouragement from the upright one, in a cadence that sounded far too familiar.

They passed her without noticing and Edith could hold back no longer. 

“Wait!”

The figures turned immediately at her cry and Edith felt the sudden urge to weep again, after everything, as the moonlight illuminated Thomas and Lucille’s faces. Lucille was wrapped in one of Thomas’s coats, her hair piled beneath one of Thomas’s hats, and Thomas leaned against her, barely conscious, but it was them. 

Edith could barely breathe. “What are you doing here?”

Lucille was white-faced; it was clear that she hadn’t expected to see Edith any more than Edith had expected to see her.

“Did you really think we were going to wait for someone to turn us in?” she whispered. “We’re going.”

Edith gaped. “Can you move him right now?” she asked, forgetting momentarily their situation. “Is it safe?”

“I did what I could.” She held out Thomas’s left arm and pushed back the sleeve. In the dim light Edith saw a fresh needle prick, red, sore, and ill-performed. Thomas groaned and opened his eyes blearily. He blinked, staring as if not quite recognizing her.

“... Edith…?” he said at last, almost disbelieving. His free hand shot out and grabbed hers before she could pull away, laying her palm against his face. Edith gasped at the contact of skin against skin and the sudden flare of arousal within her in spite of his Alpha scent. Wetness dripped down the inside of her thigh. “You’re… you’re coming with us…?” The hope in his voice tore at her.

Edith couldn’t make herself reply. Affirming it would be a lie -- wouldn’t it -- and denying it would crush him. Instead she let him lean his cheek against her hand and said nothing, taking the coward’s way.

“What will you do?” she whispered at last.

“Leave here,” Lucille said. Only her eyes betrayed her terror. “Go somewhere else. Begin again.” 

“Where will you -- _ah_ \--” Thomas was sucking on her index finger, eyes closed, and Edith could feel the pressure gathering between her legs, her bud throbbing.

“We should get off the main road,” Lucille said and steered them behind the depot, into the shadows. Suitcases crunched into the snow.

“Where will you go?” Edith pulled her hand free, trying to ignore her husband’s moan of protest. 

“Why should you care, since you won’t be going with us?” Lucille shot back and _oh_ , there was the anger in her eyes. It slammed into Edith, hot like the summers of her childhood. Accusatory.

“Lucille, you know that I can’t --”

“What will he do,” Lucille whispered, “without you?” Edith bit her lip, her eyes brimming. 

“I don’t know,” she murmured. “I don’t know.”

“He needs you, Edith.”

She looked at him. He seemed barely able to stay conscious, his eyelids fluttering. One of his hands twitched in her direction, as if wanting to go to her again, but scared to try. Unsure of herself, she reached out and touched his fingertips with her own. 

“Stay with me,” Thomas whispered, the moonlight shining in his eyes. Desperate, distraught. “I’m healing now. I can be what you’ve wanted me to be from the beginning. I won’t be so broken anymore.” He stepped unsteadily forward, away from his sister, to all but hurl himself into Edith’s arms, bringing his lips to hers. Edith held the kiss longer than she should have, starved as she was for the sensation, and then turned her face away, gently pushing him back. His weight had pressed her against the side of the building. 

“I never wanted you for anything more than who you are,” she said. “Not for what you could do for me.”

“But that’s why I love you,” he whispered helplessly. “That’s what made me fall for you from the beginning.”

“Thomas.” Lucille put her hand on his shoulder and he turned to her. “It’s no use.” He gazed at Lucille for a moment and then sighed, nodding. They turned away together, Thomas leaning heavily on her. Edith watched them go, still breathing hard from the kiss. Was that to be all? Really?

“And what of you, Lucille?” she called after them. “How can you think that you can just walk away from me without a word?” She remembered that that was precisely what she herself had done, but she brushed the thought  away.

Lucille looked away. “I don’t matter, Edith. It’s for Thomas that I beg, not for myself.”

“Liar.” She said it softly, without malice. 

Lucille shook her head sadly. Her voice cracked hard when she spoke again.

“I don’t love myself, Edith.” She was toying with one of the buttons on her coat, not meeting Edith’s eyes. “I know that you know that. And my heart is torn in two. I believed for so long that Thomas was the whole of me, since I had no love to give myself. But you… Edith… you have me, too. You’re that other part of me that I’ve lacked. And… and with you both, I’m finding myself again. You are half of me. You always will be. No matter what happens, no matter where any of us goes… there will always be that. There will _always_ be you.”

There was a long silence, broken only by a shuddering breath from Edith. Her throat ached from the effort of holding back her tears. 

“And yet,” she said at last, voice lower than usual from the painful lump in her throat, “you would have killed me anyway.”

“Yes,” Lucille said simply. She sighed. “I don’t expect you to forgive me. I know that I don’t deserve forgiveness. But I know that you did love me, for a time.”

Edith could no longer resist her tears -- they came strangled and cracking from her throat, like a child’s. 

“I _do_ ,” she sobbed. “That’s the cruelty of it.”

Lucille looked up, finally meeting her eyes. Blue in blue. “Love _is_ cruel, Edith. It twists you inside out. Maims you. But if we lose it, it’s the end of everything.”

Edith wiped at her eyes, staring up at the sky. The stars had come out: pinpricks of silver-white light against the darkness. She took several lungfuls of air, the coldness burning her insides, clearing her head. 

“I don’t know what I want,” she said at last. “Will you --” she had to find some grasp on the conversation -- “Will you go all this way on foot?”

“Don’t do this, Edith,” Lucille hissed. “Not to me. Not to us.”

“Do what?”

“Turn to small talk as if none of this matters,” she said. “Look at me and just _try_ to say that you don’t care!”

_“If I didn’t care, I would not find it so hard to leave you!”_ Edith cried, hot tears slipping down her cheeks. “I would have done it long ago!” They stared at each other. There was a quiet sigh from Thomas, who had fallen asleep against Lucille’s shoulder. “If I part from you,” she whispered, “I will regret it forever.”

_They would have murdered you._

_Can you really trust them so easily?_

“I don’t ask you to forgive us,” Lucille said. “Just give me some sign. That’s all I want.” She shook her head, her eyes glimmering in the near-darkness. “Just _be_ with us.”

Edith breathed out -- sharply from her sobs -- and spoke.

* * *

_10 February 1896_

_Dear Alan,_

_By the time you read this I will have gone, along with my husband and Lucille. Do not try to find us. I know that what you have told me is true because they have confirmed it themselves. It is my decision to give them another chance._

_I don’t think I can rationalize to you my reasons for going with them. Moreover, if I could, I doubt that you would understand. All I can say is that now I know everything and I am not afraid. I know that in doing this I have likely hurt you beyond repair. But I cannot and will not apologize for my decision. I believe there are things in life that are worth risking your life for, that there is more to love than security. And just as Thomas and Lucille have opened my eyes and made me wiser, I have, in my turn, helped them see beyond their mere survival. I have shown them the kindness and the love that they have lacked for too long._

_Perhaps, in deciding this, I go to my death. But I think not. In spite of everything I still wish to trust them as I once did. Things will be different this time, and what went wrong will be fixed. I must have faith that people really can change._

_Sometimes I fear what this has rendered me, that there is no remnant of your childhood friend left. It is in love’s nature to be cruel, to make monsters of us. But know that I will be content, no matter what happens. I have found my place in this world; I have found a love that will see me through whatever comes next; I am living the summer of my life. Some things, I think, are worth the pain they cause us. And after pain, there is relief. There are always new beginnings to make, new chapters to be written. A new story to begin._

_I remain always_

_Your friend,_

_Edith Sharpe_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, first of all, you will notice that this fic is now part of a collection. This is because I am completely unprepared to let this AU go and have a lot of bonus material to put out. Scenes from other character's POV's that Edith doesn't get to see, maybe flashbacks. Who knows? That's going to be a thing, so keep an eye out if you're interested!
> 
> Second of all, I am posting another Crimson Peak fic fairly soon. It probably won't be quite as long as this one, but it'll be multi-chapter and I think you're going to enjoy it a lot. And that one will be Thomas-centric, so if that sweetens the deal for anyone...

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr as andtheansweris42 if you'd like to drop in and say hi!


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